: 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. Copyright No....._„__ 
Shelf__^__2_. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



EXTRACTS 



FROM 



AN ELDER'S DIARY 



Rev JOSEPH B./STRATTON, D. D., 

NATCHEZ, MISS. 




Presbyterian Committee of Publication. 




COPYRIGHTE 1) 
BY 

J A S. K H A Z E N, Secretary of Publication,. 
i S96. 



Printed by 
Whittet & Shepperson, 
Richmond, Va. 



NOTE. 



The permission to publish the extracts from 
an elder's diary contained in this volume was 
given by a competent authority, at the request 
of the present editor, to whom the privilege of 
reading the original manuscript had been ac- 
corded. The request was made in the hope 
that a record of the actual labors, trials and 
experiences of one bearing the important office 
of ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church, 
interspersed with illustrative incidents, might 
be serviceable to this branch of the Christian 
ministry. Treatises and manuals, proposing to 
throw light upon the spirit and manner in which 
the functions of the eldership should be dis- 
charged, have been numerous of late. The 
fact may be indicative of an awakened con- 
viction on the part of the teaching ministry 
that their work needs to be buttressed by an 
increased efficiency on the part of these co- 
3 



4 



Preface. 



adjutors taken from the body -of a church's 
members. The house given to the former to 
build is so " exceedingly magnifical" in its. 
design and proportions that it calls for an 
expenditure of talent and toil greater than 
any one man can furnish. It has been thought 
by the editor that the living picture afforded 
by these annals of an elder's attempts 'to do 
his duty might .be a helpful supplement to 
directories of a more definite kind, and hence 
they have been given to the public. 

It is hardly necessary to add, that in copy- 
ing these extracts care has been taken to con- 
ceal names of persons and places, so as to 
avoid the risk of trespassing upon the sanc- 
tities of private life. But few changes in the 
language have been required in preparing the 
manuscript for publication. The facts intro- 
duced, I have reason to know, are realities, 
not fictions ; and the selections from the body 
of the diary have been made with the best 
judgment the editor could exercise. 

J. B. Stratton. 

''Sunset Lodge," Natchez, Miss. 



CONTENTS. 



i. 

The Struggle, 

II. 

The Decision, 

III. 

Preparation, 

IV. 

A Practical Problem, . 



A Victory, . 

New Crosses, 

Peacemaking, 

The Presbytery, . 

An Inquirer, 

The Sabbath- School, 



VI. 
VII. 
VIII. 
IX. 

X. 

5 



6 Contents. 

XI. Page. 
A Revival, ....... 65 

XII. 

A Romance, . . . . . . . 72 

XIII. 

A Pestilence, ...... 81 

XIV. 

The General Assembly, .... 94 
XV. 

Pastoral Changes, ..... 106 
XVI. 

Tribulation, . . . . . * . 110 

xvi: 

Session Meetings, ..... 122 
XVIII. 

Sociability. . . . . . .128 

XIX 

Church Discipline, ..... 135 
XX. 

Sovereign Grace, . . ... . 143 

XXI 

Spiritual Communications, .... 150 
XXII. 

Eventide, . . . . . . .162 



EXTRACTS 

FROM 

AN ELDER'S DIARY. 



EXTRACT I. 

THE STRUGGLE. 

May 18, 1865. — To my surprise — I might 
almost say dismay — I have received notice 
to-day of my election at a recent meeting of 
our congregation to the office of ruling elder. 
The announcement has thrown my mind into a 
tumult which has almost amounted to an agony. 
I seem to be standing in the presence of a 
mountain, with a voice sounding in my ears, 
bidding me to lift it. At every glance I take 
at the stupendous object, the larger it seems 
to grow, and the more my consciousness of 
my inability to bear its weight overwhelms 
me. My inclinations prompt me at once to 
decline the call. My judgment, as far as I can 
be said to have any in my present confusion 
of mind, sides with my inclinations. I am 
averse to positions of prominence or leadership. 
7 



8 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 

My disposition leads me to shrink from re- 
sponsibility and the criticism to which office 
exposes one. I have not enjoyed the advan- 
tages of literary culture. My training has 
been largely of a practical sort. I feel myself 
at home in every-day business matters, but in 
the higher field of ecclesiastical legislation and 
spiritual science I am a novice, needing to be 
taught rather than presuming to teach. Be- 
sides, I am painfully lacking in self-confidence. 
I lose my command of such resources as I may 
really possess, when called upon to act in the 
eyes of a multitude. My bewilderment is op- 
pressive! I fear to take a step in any direc- 
tioD, lest it should be a wrong one. Lord, 
help me ! Send me light. 

Sunday, May 21. — The last three days have 
been so absorbed in the consideration of this 
great question of duty which has been thrust 
upon me that I have had little capacity for 
my ordinary employments. My repugnance to 
accepting the office proposed to me continues, 
perhaps, as decided as ever ; but sometimes the 
suspicion steals into my mind that there may, 
to some extent, be a carnal bias affecting my 
way of looking at the matter; and fearing that 
I might be unduly swayed by this, I have tried, 
with the simplicity of a little child, to follow 



The Struggle. 



9 



the counsel of the apostle: "If any man lack 
wisdom, let him ask of God." 

I have felt, at the close of this holy day, in 
which I seem to have been unusually conscious 
of the nearness of that divine inspirer, that 
the aspect of the harassing problem has some- 
what changed, and that some of the factors in 
it which at first appalled me have been with- 
drawn, and others which I had failed to appre- 
ciate have come into view. 

I think I am indebted, in part, for the com- 
parative composure I enjoy to-night to some 
thoughts uttered by our pastor in his sermon 
this morning. Speaking of our Lord's remark 
to his disciples, in Matthew x. 20, "It is not 
ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father 
which speaketh in you," he explained that 
"speaking," here, might be understood as in- 
cluding all forms of testimony by which men 
may bear witness to Christ, or render service 
in the propagating of his religion ; and, while 
admitting that the immediate reference of the 
saying was to the supernatural aid his disciples 
might expect in their controversies with their 
opponents, he argued that all believers are au- 
thorized to expect from their heavenly Father 
the help of the Holy Spirit in fitting them for 
duty, more confidently even than children are 



10 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 

to expect bread from the hand of a natural 
parent. (Luke xi. 13.) "As the presence of 
the Holy Spirit," he continued, "implies the 
exercise of his power in some way, there is 
valid ground for the expectation that this 
power will be exercised in behalf of every 
sincere Christian who is striving, whether by 
speech or work, to bring men to the knowledge 
of the truth as it is in Jesus." 

In revolving these thoughts, I find that an 
estimate of the efficiency I might bring into 
the office set before me is not to be limited by 
the paucity of my personal endowments, but 
that the declaration, "It is not ye that speak, 
but the Spirit of your Father," carries me out 
of my feeble self, and shows me a reserve of 
force lying behind or above me, whose resources 
are available for me simply upon the asking. 

The train of my reflections has been, in some 
measure, assuring ; and I go to my rest repeat- 
ing the words of Moses (Exodus xxxiii. 15): 
"If thy presence go not with me, carry us not 
up hence," but venturing to add, with a hesi- 
tating confidence, "If that presence will go 
with me, Lord, I will lean upon thy strength 
and go up." 



EXTKACT II. 



THE DECISION. 

Sunday, June 4. — I review the events of 
this day with peculiar solemnity. It seems as 
if the vows of consecration, which I made ten 
years ago when I was admitted to the com- 
munion of the church, had been repeated 
with a special emphasis and a special preci- 
sion of aim and purpose. If I said then, with 
an earnest heart, "Lord, what wilt thou have 
me to do ? " I have with tenfold earnestness 
renewed the appeal to-day. 

My assent to the call having been given in 
the previous week, it was arranged that the 
ordination should take place this morning, in 
connection with the administration of the Lord's 
supper, for which this was the regular season. 
It was a happy conjunction. It was a good 
position, in the presence of the symbols of the 
Saviour's service for his people, for an honest 
disciple to get a view of the measure of service 
due to him. It was impossible not to respond 
to the import of the sacred festival in the terms 
of the apostle's confession, "To me to live is 
Ohrist." 

11 



12 



Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



The opportunity was a good one, too, in 
which to realize that my investiture with office 
was a fact as well as a form ; for it gave me the 
privilege, as a minister in the Lord's house, of 
presenting to my fellow-believers the emblem- 
atic bread and cup, which, by his own ordi- 
nance, were to attest the redemption wrought 
through his death till he should come again. 

While the series of thoughts or convictions 
by which the result just consummated has been 
reached is fresh in my mind, I wish to record 
them deliberately, thinking that a recollection 
of them may be useful to me in coming time. 

First, then, I cannot entertain a doubt that 
the congregating of Christians in the form of a 
church, as practiced by the apostles, included 
in it the appointing of a certain class of per- 
sons to be teachers and rulers in each particular 
body. The economy, or house-law of the new 
family, called necessarily for such a class. Ac- 
cordingly, when a band of disciples had been 
gathered together, in several cities in Asia Minor, 
by Paul and Barnabas (Acts xiv. 23), and a 
permanent organization had to be introduced, 
under which their corporate life might be pro- 
tected and cultivated, they, that is, Paul, an 
inspired ambassador of Christ, and Barnabas, 
his chosen associate, "ordained them" elders 



The Decision. 



13 



(or presbyters) in every city; and, then, "hav- 
ing prayed with fasting and commended them 
to the Lord on whom they believed," left them 
under the sole charge of these officers. Simi- 
larly, I find that the apostle commissioned 
Titus his deputy to " ordain elders in every 
city" in Crete. (Titus i. 5.) Uniformly, I 
may say, wherever I see a church referred to 
in apostolic writings, I see the " elders " con- 
joined with it as a constituent and representative 
element. (See Acts xi. 30; xx. 17; Jas. v. 14; 
1 Pet. v. 1.) I am sure, therefore, that the 
office that I have consented to accept has the 
authentic warrant of an institution of the head 
of the church. 

Second, It is clear to me, from the tenor of 
the Scripture allusions and the probabilities of 
the case, that there was, ordinarily at least, a 
plurality of these elders in each church ; and, 
if so, " diversities of gifts," which led to a 
diversity,of function, such as now distinguishes 
the "teaching" from the "ruling" elder in the 
Presbyterian Church. I am satisfied, there- 
fore, that the office with which I have been 
invested has a place in the divine plan, and 
needs to be filled, in order to perfect the 
organization of a church. It strikes me that 
this multiplied way of exercising the oversight 



i4 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



of the flock is eminently the result of the wis- 
dom of the Holy Ghost. 

Third, I am constrained to conclude that, 
owing to the incompetency caused by the old 
age or confirmed ill-health of some of the 
members of the eldership in this church, there 
is, at this time, a patent necessity for an addi- 
tion to their number. It is clearly the duty of 
some individual or individuals in the male con- 
stituency of the church, in this exigency, to 
lend their services, however diffident they may 
be as to their worthiness, to this branch of the 
Lord's work. The appeal addresses itself to 
me, as well as to others. It is enforced by the 
voice of my brethren. If it is I whom the 
Master needs, I must not refuse to obey. 

Fourth, I see that many who, like Moses 
and Jeremiah, have had a clear vocation from 
God to do service in his kingdom, and have 
shrunk from the mission assigned them through 
conscious unfitness, have, nevertheless, when 
obediently taking up their burden, "out of 
weakness been made strong"; and by their 
histor} T I am admonished to be distrustful of 
those self-distrusting scruples which led me, at 
first view, to object to a proposed work for God. 

Fifth, I find a growing attractiveness in the 
work I am invited to take up, from the convic- 



The Decision. 



15 



tion that it will not only add to my opportuni- 
ties for doing good, but will contribute largely 
to my growth in personal piety. I am sure the 
"one thing" I have set before me as the su- 
preme end of my present life is, "to press to- 
ward the mark for the prize of the high calling 
of God in Christ Jesus." I persuade myself 
that in obeying this call of the church I shall 
realize more sensibly the force of this " high 
calling." I shall be brought into more con- 
scious sympathy and fellowship with Christ. 
In "losing" my life for his sake, in giving my 
thoughts and cares to the interests of his cause, 
I may hope to experience the blessed result of 
"saving" it, in the sense of quickening and 
maturing the spiritual principle within me. I 
may find myself growing richer in grace in 
proportion as I abridge my schemes of self- 
seeking (which is the name for worldly busi- 
ness), and consecrate my energies to the ad- 
vancement of Christ's kingdom. There is an 
inspiration in this idea which gives me courage, 
and which I cannot but think comes from above. 
The peace it has brought me is peculiar. May 
I not regard it as the "perfect peace " promised 
to those "whose minds are stayed on God"? 

Sixth, I have been confirmed in the conclu- 
sion to which I have come, by an exalted view 



16 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



of the nature of that faith which I am exercis- 
ing. It appears to me it is a sort of transmu- 
tation — a putting of him in whom I trust in 
the place of myself, or a transfer of my poor 
personality to that of my Chief, who has said 
to his messenger, " Go, and I will be with 
thee!" The work I am to do must be done by 
a human instrument, by human methods; but 
the Being who has allowed me to link myself 
with him can give a potency to my efforts be- 
yond what they inherently possess. I will 
measure my possible efficiency by that which I 
know belongs to the Master with whom I am 
identified. This seems to be the view of faith 
which St. Paul expresses when he says (Gal. 
ii. 20), " I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in 
me"; and (Phil. iv. 13) "I can do all things 
through Christ which strengtheneth me." Here, 
too, in the confidence that in the sincere en- 
deavor to do the work proposed to me I shall 
be acting under an inspiration and an invigora- 
tion derived from fellowship with Christ, I 
find a ground of comfort as I contemplate the 
grave responsibilities I am about to assume. 
" We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that 
the excellency of the power may be of God, 
and not of us." (2 Cor. iv. 7.) 



EXTRACT III. 



PREP ABA TION. 

Sunday, July 2. — I have been occupied dur- 
ing the past month in studying, as I have had 
opportunity, the nature of the office of ruling 
elder, and the form of practical work which it 
includes. For this purpose I have gone, first, 
to the apostolic writings, and sought to get 
from this source a definite idea of what the 
infallible founders of the Christian church in- 
tended that the presbyters whom they ordained 
should be and do. This idea, I think, is care- 
fully and correctly reproduced in the section 
touching the ruling elder in Chapter IV. of 
the Form of Government of our church. In 
addition, I have consulted such of the pub- 
lished treatises and hand-books upon the sub- 
ject as were within my reach. The effect has 
been a helpful one. I feel that I have a pre- 
cise and intelligent conception, at least as to 
the main points, of what is required of me by 
conscience and the body which has called me 
to be its overseer ; and my hope is that I shall 
be able, in my manner of executing my office, 
to bear with me a fixed consciousness of its obli- 
2 17 



18 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



gations, and not leave them to be suggested by 
casual impulses or merely ceremonial demands. 
Always, and everywhere, I want to remember 
my ministry and to "ma^ke full proof of it." 

It lias seemed to me, knowing as I do, and as 
everybody does, what is expected of the pastor 
of a church, and recognizing the ruling elder as 
a connecting link between him and his flock, 
touching both parties in his relations and func- 
tions, that the duty of the elder may be com- 
prehended in this one statement — that he is to 
endeavor in all things except those which be- 
long specially to the pastoral office to make the 
pastor's work his own. Through his labors 
the pastor's efficiency is to be ramified. He 
is to be the arm which moves in accord with 
the will of the head. What the pastor preaches 
in the way of doctrine and precept he is to re- 
produce as a " living epistle," which may be 
read of all men, in his character and deport- 
ment; and what the pastor enjoins as a Chris- 
tian duty he is to endorse by his consistent 
example. He is to be the reflector by which the 
force of the pulpit is to be conveyed to the peo- 
ple; and the reporter by whom the needs of 
the people are to be disclosed to the pastor. 
St. Paul seems to have regarded Timothy as 
standing somewhat in this relation to himself,. 



Preparation. 



19 



when lie wrote to the Corinthians (1 Cor. iv. 17) : 
"For this cause have I sent unto you Timo- 
theus, who is my beloved son, and faithful in 
the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance 
of my ivays which be in Christ, as I teach every- 
where in every church." 

I intend to keep this general idea in my mind 
as a convenient summary of particular duties. 
I fancy that it will give a play and scope to the 
sensibilities in my work, which, perhaps, a mere 
attention to a routine or a schedule might fail 
to supply. I fully appreciate the necessity for 
order as a condition of success in any under- 
taking, and I will try to observe it; but my 
disposition leads to chafe under the strict ap- 
plication of lines and angles in religious ser- 
vices. With the regularity of Ezekiel's wheel, 
I like to see the free motion of the "Spirit" 
which is in it. 



EXTRACT IV. 



A PRACTICAL PROBLEM. 

Sunday, July 23. — As happens in most 
cases with those who bear the office of ruling 
elder, I am embarrassed by the absorbing de- 
mands of secular avocations. My time, for the 
greater part of each week-day, belongs to my 
employers. I am religiously bound to show 
myself a just steward. I have a wife and three 
children, whom, by careful management, I can 
support comfortably on my salary. My solici- 
tude for them naturally reaches beyond the 
present moment, and calls for forethought and 
scheming in order to protect them against the 
possible needs of the future. The obligation 
to provide for those of one's own house, which 
St. Paul so forcibly urges, is one which I 
keenly and constantly feel. How to make this 
consistent with the business of my Father's 
house is the problem with which I am con- 
fronted. I must exercise the same patient de- 
liberation in this matter that I am accustomed 
to use in adjusting the apparently conflicting 
accounts which baffle me in my book-keeping. 
Fidelity to God and fidelity to man are both 
20 



A Practical Problem. 



21 



right, and, when properly conceived and de- 
fined, cannot be at variance with each other. 
A few points, at least, seem to me clear now. 

First, I take it that for all that I am really 
required to do in the way of spiritual work 
there must be, somewhere, an opportunity. 
If, after proper inquiry and experiment, none 
can be found for any particular act or service, 
I may make myself easy in the conclusion that 
that is not required of me. 

Second, Through the beneficent arrangement 
of the divine law, I have secured to me one- 
seventh of my time, through the recurrence of 
the weekly Sabbath. A judicious use of this 
season may be made to yield an abundant 
opportunity for Christian labor, without divert- 
ing it from its appointed end as a season of 
sacred resting. The Sabbath, in enjoining rest, 
does not proscribe activity. It recognizes the 
fact that rest is not sluggishness, but the sensa- 
tion of relief which one feels in passing from 
one wholesome form of activity to another. 
The mere shifting from the mind the burden of 
weekly cares and responsibilities brings with 
it a sensible infusion of freedom and exhilara- 
tion to a jaded spirit. The hours devoted to 
public and private worship are eminently rest- 
ful in their influence. The atmosphere of 



22 EXTEACTS FROM AN ELDER'S DlARY. 

home-life is a delightful substitute for the 
bustle and strife of the market and the factory. 
And then the portion of the day which may 
be given to out-door labor of a religious sort, 
by its throwing the energy of mind and body 
into new and interesting channels, may be made 
to minister refreshment through what appears 
to be toil. My Sabbaths, I am determined, 
shall be harvest days. I see golden fruitage in 
them. 

And, third, I will "gather up the fragments," 
husband the odd moments of my time. I will 
pluck ears of grain as I plod on my daily er- 
rands through the cornfields. A little incident 
which befell me yesterday, trifling as the shak- 
ing of a leaf on a mulberry tree, has taught me 
that by vigilance and celerity an occasion may 
be found for thrusting a good deed into those 
interstices of time which are usually so minute 
&s to be deemed incapable of being turned to 
any useful account. 

As I was leisurely returning from my dinner, 

I met on street a little girl whom I knew 

as a Sunday-school scholar. I stopped to take 
her by the hand and ask after her family, when, 
with the eagerness to tell news which is char- 
acteristic of children, she said : " Mrs. S , 

in there/' pointing to an adjoining house, "is 



A Practical Problem. 



23 



. very sick." Mrs. S was known to me as 

a worthy widow woman who depended upon 
her labor for the support of herself and two 
young children. I looked at my watch, and 
found that I had ten minutes to spare before I 
was due at my office. I knocked at the door, 
and, in answer to a feeble response, went in. 
A moment's glance and a few inquiries were 
enough to satisfy me that the poor woman was, 
indeed, very sick, and that her needs were nu- 
merous and urgent. I cheered her with a few 
comforting words, and promised to send some 
one to her relief. I hastened on my way, and 
fortunately meeting a good lady, who, I knew> 
was a member of one of our church associa- 
tions, I reported the case to her, and arranged 
for the immediate supply of all the sufferer's 
wants. To-day, on my way to church, I called 
and found a nurse at her bedside, a physician 
in attendance, and an ample stock of provisions 
in the house. I thought to myself, that little 
blank of ten minutes was well filled up ; and 
the sweepings of a man's time, as well as those 
of the United States' mint, may be found to 
contain particles of gold. 

With the exercise of watchfulness in detect- 
ing opportunities, and promptness in using 
them, I am convinced many forms of Chris- 



24 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 

tian work can be inserted into the stern routine 
of the busiest life. The eagerness with which 
these cabmen, whom I see daily on the streets, 
keep their eyes glancing from side to side, in 
order to pick up a passenger, has often sug- 
gested to me the reflection that, if we laborers 
for God were half as zealous in our endeavors 
to attract souls into his kingdom, we should be 
able more frequently at the day's end to make 
report to our Master of palpable proofs of our 
fidelity in our calling. 

O Lord, help me to be as careful in my 
service of thee as I am in my efforts to fulfil 
my obligations to my earthly employer! 



EXTRACT Y. 



A VICTOR Y. 

August 16. — I feel to-night like making a 
special record of my gratitude to God for the 
aid he has given me in the performance of a 
duty which, at first, was contemplated by me 
with serious misgivings. I refer to the matter 
of prayer in public. I cannot but regard the 
degree to which I have overcome my reluctance 
to engage in this exercise, and the command of 
thoughts and words which I have acquired in 
leading in it, as a gracious answer to my sup- 
plications for divine aid in the discharge of my 
office in this particular. It seems to me, as I 
reflect upon it, that this gift, if I may humbly 
call it such, means more than a single endow- 
ment. It indicates a broadening and an eleva- 
tion of the whole sphere of my spiritual being. 
If it be fact as well as poetry, that " prayer is 
the Christian's vital breath," it is not an un- 
reasonable inference that an aptitude for prayer 
is significant of an enlargement of the entire 
religious life. As I analyze my experience, 
it appears to me that prayer is intimately 
associated with every stage of its progress. 
St. James puts (chapter iv. 8) the two proposi- 
25 



26 Extracts from an Elder s Diary. 



tions, "Draw nigli to God, and he will draw 
nigh to you," in as close a conjunction as that 
of the two hemispheres of a globe. 

After a long period of aberration from God, 
through indifference, worldliness of mind, and 
devotion to carnal gratification, I was led to 
notice the fact that if God were a being co- 
existent with me in the world, my course of 
life had been a perpetual abandonment of him. 
The thought startled me. It led to a study of 
the claims of God to my faith, and to a con- 
viction that he, and the religion which acknow- 
ledged him, were tremendous realities. In a 
dim sort of way, as of one seeing him afar off, 
I had drawn nigh to God. It was a trembling 
first step. I must get nearer; but in my con- 
scious guilt I did not dare to approach him. 
I felt my need of a healer of the breach — a 
medium of access; and I found this revealed 
to me in the mission and work of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. I then discovered a ground 
upon which I could pray ; and I did pray, 
and the prayer, based upon Christ's mediation, 
brought me light, and peace, and assurance 
that God had pardoned and accepted me ; and 
thus I "drew nigh" to God, and he "drew 
nigh " to me, in a reconciliation like that which 
united the prodigal and his father. And I 



A Victory. 



27 



liave found ever since, that my "fellowship 
with the Father and the Son" has been con- 
current with the genuineness of my prayers. 

I began my religious life thus, I may say, 
with the impression that prayer was something 
more than the begging of favors ; that it was a 
mode of communing with God — a process in 
which there was a mutual drawing nigh be- 
tween him and my soul. This impression, in 
proportion as it was kept in operation, made 
prayer a very serious and solemn exercise. It 
overshadowed my spirit very sensibly with the 
one great idea of the presence of God. It had 
another effect : it produced what I might call 
an abiding prayerful frame, out of which grew 
a habit of mingling communing with God with 
the continuous workings of my mind in its secret 
recesses. It was a living, if I may so express 
it, in constant touch of God, so that prayer 
kjecame an element in all breathing and acting, 
although no outward sign revealed it. This 
informal way of communing with God did not 
abate, but I think rather increased the relish 
with which I engaged in^the more deliberate 
devotions of the closet; and, I may add, gave 
me an aptness in throwing my own mind into the 
currents of public prayer, as offered by others. 

These reflections upon my early religious 



28 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



life, saffused as they are with the recollection 
of the warmth of a "first love," recall to me 
sadly that I was derelict in one important par- 
ticular, that of family worship. It was some 
years after our marriage that my wife and I 
connected ourselves with the church ; and dur- 
ing that period it had not occurred to us that 
we ought to sanctify our home-life by such a 
practice. At our reception into the church the 
duty was enjoined upon us by our pastor, and 
for a time was observed by us. It was hard, 
however, under the pressure of business en- 
gagements and the cares of the household, to 
keep up the practice with regularity, and ulti- 
mately it was suspended. It has been resumed 
now, never to be intermitted again. 

The high conception I have entertained of 
the augustness of prayer as communion with 
God has, I think, affected me with a dread of 
allowing a regard for the mere fitness of style 
and structure to impair the devotional element 
in the offering of public prayer. Hence, until 
recently, I have persuaded myself that my ob- 
jections were good, and have declined to par- 
ticipate in the prayers at our weekly meetings. 
In the nighness of my human hearers I fore- 
saw, as I thought, a barrier to that nighness 
between God and myself that I felt was neces- 
sary in prayer. 



A Victory. 



29 



After my induction into my office as elder, I 
recognized that scruple, in this particular, was 
standing in the way of an obvious duty. I 
looked into my heart carefully, faced the ques- 
tion conscientiously, and soon was cheered by 
the conviction that private inclination had gone 
over, largely, to the side of duty. I could say, 
"Not as I will, but as thou wiliest." The only 
point which embarrassed me now was the prac- 
tical one, Am I able to do that which I am 
willing to do? 

The answer to this doubt came in the 
thought — the grace which has wrought in me 
" to will " can just as easily work in me "to do." 
My next step was to bring my deficiency into 
contact with the sufficiency which I knew to 
be in God. I prayed alone that he would give 
me the ability to pray before my fellowmen. I 
told him my infirmity, and besought the aid 
which should lift me above the gravitation of a 
morbid self-consciousness and a distracting en- 
vironment. I drew very nigh to him and asked 
him not to let me lose the sense of my nighness 
to him when I should attempt to open my lips 
in the presence of a congregation. This step 
brought additional strength. 

My next one was to reflect that the opera- 
tions of grace imply and include a correspond- 



30 



Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



nig effort on the part of the subject of them to 
gain the blessing which he desires to have 
given him. While "the preparation of the 
heart in man is from the Lord," the bestowing 
of it pre-supposes that the man who seeks it 
has sought, to the best of his ability, to prepare 
his heart for it. I seconded my appeals to 
God, therefore, by striving to fix in my mind a 
definite idea of what the purpose in a public 
prayer should be, and what should properly be 
the form of it. I said, it ought to voice, as far 
as possible, the mind of the company in whose 
stead and behalf it is uttered. It need not, and 
generally ought not to, be long. It ought not 
to be elaborate, or ambitious, or eccentric. It 
ought not to aim at comprehending everything. 
It ought to be regulated and modified by the 
controlling thought, "I am speaking to God." 
I did not attempt to compose prayers, but I 
did endeavor to familiarize my mind with the 
material which ordinarily pertained to prayer, 
and, to some extent, with the terms and phrases 
which were suited to it. For this purpose I 
studied carefully such published forms of prayer 
as commended themselves to my judgment ; 
and especially sought to gain some command 
of the inimitable vocabulary of devotion con- 
tained in the Holy Scripture*. 



A Victory. 



31 



Having previously given my consent, I was 
spared the shock which might have been the 
effect of an unexpected summons, when I was 
first called upon to lead in prayer at our weekly 
service ; and was gratified to find that with con - 
siderable composure I was able to keep my 
mind intent upon the few topics which suc- 
ceeded one another in my brief effusion. I had 
done my duty ; and I felt happier, especially 
when, at the close of the meeting, a brother 
took me by the hand and said, quietly, " Thank 
you for that prayer ! " 

Since then I have come to realize that facility 
in this exercise is itself an answer to prayer — a 
thought which is adapted to give confidence to 
the possessor of it, and at the same time make 
him humble in the use of it. I am satisfied, 
too, that this is a gift to be coveted as a means 
of communicating good to others. A fit and 
seasonable prayer often becomes the vehicle by 
which some one's benumbed and crippled soul 
is lifted out of its confusion, and enabled to feel 
that its latent yearnings have been made clear, 
and its dumb desires have become articulate, 
through the sympathetic words of another. 

God help me to appreciate the talent, in the 
limited measure in which I have received it, 
more and more, and to be ready to use it for 
his glory as opportunity is offered to me ! 



EXTRACT VI. 



NEW CROSSES. 

Sunday, October I. — The past summer has 
seen me pressing on in official experience and 
acquaintance with the trials of presbyterial 

service. During the absence of Dr. N , 

our pastor, on his vacation, I have been re- 
quired, on several occasions, to conduct the 
weekly prayer-meeting. My first effort in this 
line was attended by a perturbation of spirit 
which, I am sure, if I had begun to cherish any 
feeling of self-sufficiency, would have taken it all 
out of me. Nothing but the voice of conscience 
reminding me that, as I had put my hand to 
the plough, I could not consistently look back, 
nerved me to undertake the formidable task. 

Remembering a rule which I had adopted in 
my secular operations, that in order to the do- 
ing of anything I must first get a clear concep- 
tion of the thing I had to do, I set before me, 
as distinctly as I could, the object for which 
our meeting was to be held. I then endeavored 
to arrange the series of exercises so that each 
should have a bearing upon this object. The 
address, or lecture, was the part of the service 
32 



New Crosses. 



33 



which most appalled me, for I was neither "a 
scribe learned in the law," nor a ready speaker. 
However, by keeping in mind that a simple 
man must attempt only simple things, and by 
looking to the Giver of wisdom for help, I 
braced myself to the work. My wife, as we 
reached the lecture-room, added her counsel: 
"My dear, now do be short." 

After announcing one stirring hymn, I pro- 
posed another, and the singing put the audi- 
ence into a good frame of mind. A brother 
who was accustomed to lead followed with a 
fervent prayer. Another song and prayer kept 
up the flame of interest, and by the time the 
Scripture selections were to be read my hear- 
ers were far more in the humor of devotion 
than of criticism. I read from Luke, chapter 
xix., the account of our Lord's visit to Zaccheus 
at his house, and added several other passages 
from the Old and New Testaments, in which 
God appears as making special revelations of 
his favor towards pious households. Without 
any formal introduction, and without an allu- 
sion to myself as a novice in the art of exposi- 
tion, I stated my subject, "The Presence of 
Christ in the Home," and in my brief unfold- 
ing of it I made three points : First, The ulti- 
mate purpose of the family institution, the fur- 
3 



34 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 

nishing of subjects for the kingdom of God; 
Second, The facilities afforded by it for this 
end, in the varied motives, means, and oppor- 
tunities for moulding character included in it ; 
" and Third, The promises which assured us that 
Christ was always ready to bring the efficiency 
of his gracious presence to bless our efforts 
where the doors of our homes were not closed 
against him. I had but little to say in the am- 
plification of these points, beyond sustaining 
them by testimony drawn from Scripture, and 
closed my remarks by the simple question, 
" Brethren, is the kind of life which our children, 
our friends, our servants, are witnessing in our 
homes such as would give them the impression 
that Jesus is abiding there from day to day?" 
With a prayer and a hymn breathing the de- 
sire that there might be more homes amongst 
us in which the Saviour was always, as in the 
house in Bethany, finding an open door and a 
loving welcome, the service closed, and I went 
home with little self-praise, but much praise to 
God, in my heart. My subsequent efforts, 
though never free from some embarrassment, 
were, of course, less embarrassing. 

A sorer trial, however, awaited me when, on 
last Saturday, a note was received from the 
senior elder, saying that as the supply expected 



New Crosses. 



35 



to fill our pulpit on the Sabbath had failed us, 
and he was confined at home by sickness, he 
particularly requested that I should conduct 
the worship at the church on the following 
day. I was staggered at the thought of oc- 
cupying a position of such prominence, and 
was disposed at once to pronounce the thing 
impossible. Something kept me from putting 
this response in writing. Something whis- 
pered to my conscience that I had promised to 
go work in any part of the Lord's vineyard in 
which I might be needed. Something reminded 
me that my infirmities had been graciously 
helped thus far in every case where I had 
undertaken a difficult duty. Little by little, at 
these suggestions, my reluctance gave way, and 
my purpose was formed. The time was short, 
the urgency of the case gave intensity to my 
mental operations, and in a brief space the 
whole order of services was mapped out. 
Spurgeon, abbreviated, furnished me with a 
sermon, and the aid of a brother elder was se- 
cured for the devotional exercises. As I look 
back to-night over the accomplished task, I 
feel like drawing a long breath, as one who 
has crossed a perilous chasm on a frail bridge ; 
and a passage which I read this morning from 
the thirty-fourth Psalm, verses 4 and 5, occurs 



36 



Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



to me as a fit expression of my present emotions. 
The good monitor at my side, in her discreet 
way, has just remarked, " I trembled all over 
when I saw yon go into that pnlpit. But I 
believe I would be willing to see you go there 
again!" 



EXTKACT VII. 



PEA GEM A KING. 

December 1. — The crookedness which in- 
heres in human nature, even after it has been 
straightened by divine grace, I suppose, will 
reveal itself in some form and in certain cases 
in every body of Christians. The Saviour's 
prayers, "Forgive us our trespasses," and 
"Lead us not into temptation," seem to imply 
that we are never to assume that we are exempt 
from its operation. It is a vicious element left 
clinging to our moral system, perhaps, to guard 
us against the dangerous fancy that we are 
already perfect ; or it may be intended to serve 
as the resisting power, by conflict with which 
our spiritual strength needs to be maintained 
and developed. 

I have to make confession that I myself, who 
ought to be "an ensample to the flock," was 
recently betrayed into an exhibition of this per- 
verse principle, by which I have been deeply 
humbled, although, I hope, ultimately benefited. 
The apparently negligent misplacing of some 
important mail-matter by a clerk at the post- 
office had given me serious trouble, and led 
37 



38 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 

me, perhaps too sharply, to charge him with 
his fault. He resented my reproof in a tone so 
offensive that I repeated my charge in plainer 
and more emphatic terms. This exasperated 
him still more, and drew from him an abusive 
denunciation of the church officers for some 
ill-treatment of his wife, who was a member of 
the church, in the matter of her "sitting." 
This allegation I knew to be utterly ground- 
less, and pronounced it so, and turned from 
him, angry myself, and leaving him in a tempest 
of passion. I chafed undei the irritation pro- 
duced by this altercation, until gradually, as 
the fever subsided, I awoke to a calm view of 
the unseemly temper I had exhibited. I was 
shocked at the attitude in which I had allowed 
myself to be placed. I let the day pass, that 
both parties might regain sobriety; and the 
next morning addressed a note to my antago- 
nist, in which, without an allusion to his part 
in the affair, I deplored my own as hasty and 
unbecoming my character as a Christian ; re- 
tracted all objectionable language that I had 
used, and expressed the hope that our former 
friendly relations might not be interrupted by 
my intemperate conduct. In a few hours a 
reply came, frank in its tone and pronouncing 
the unpleasantness as at an end. Our inter- 



Peacemaking. 



39 



course lias been cordial ever since, but I have 
learned a lesson as to the duty of circumspect- 
ness. 

What I was thinking about, however, when 
this incident came into my mind, was an effort 
at peacemaking between two disaffected mem- 
bers of our church, in which I was engaged 
early this week. It was a case of discord be- 
tween husband and wife. They were plain 
people, but respectable for their decent and 
regular lives. The woman had ceased for 
some time to attend worship, and upon the 
fact being mentioned on some occasion by our 
pastor to the husband, he had revealed to him 
that a "root of bitterness" had sprung up in 
their home in the shape of dissension, and that 
his wife, in consequence, had carried her "con- s 
trariness," as he called it, to the point of 
refusing fellowship with him in going to the 
house of God. " I don't know what to do with 
her," was the poor man's lament. "She will 
not let me talk to her. I wish you would come 
and set us to rights." A time was fixed upon 

for a visit, and Dr. N , not a little to my 

alarm, summoned me to go with him, "as a 
silent partner," I remarked, in consenting. 

Our greeting of the pair when they made 
their appearance was specially cordial, and a 



40 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



little time was given to the usual common- 
places of courtesy. At length Dr. N , in 

the kindest of tones, remarked: "You have not 

been well, Mrs. A . I have missed you 

from several of our last meetings." 

"Well — yes — not sick exactly," she replied, 
in a hesitating way, "but ," then stopped. 

"It has not been trouble of mind, T hope?" 
inquired the doctor. 

"Yes, sir," she replied, in a passionate ex- 
plosion, "yes, sir, and worse than that; it has 
been trouble of heart." 

"My dear madam, you distress me deeply," 
said the doctor. "What is the matter?" 

"Ask him! ask him!" was her reply, point- 
ing to her husband. 

The doctor's eye turned to the latter, who, 
with a good deal of emotion in his voice, stam- 
mered out: "Dr. 1ST , you are our pastor, 

and have always been our friend. I will tell 
you the truth, and I beg you to help us if you 
can. I don't want to speak against Susan. She 
has been a good wife to me, and maybe I have 
done wrong by her. We disagreed about the 
bringing- up of our daughter. She is just fif- 
teen years old, you know, and is her mother's 
pride. She has let her stop school, and go to 
parties, and drive out with young men — and — 



Peacemaking. 



41 



and- " and here he, too, broke down. In a 

moment he added: "It is jealousy for the girl. 
She says I love the boy best ; but God knows 
I love them both, and their mother, too, as I 
love my own soul ! " 

The scene was becoming affecting. I ven- 
tured to interpose, in a cheerful way, "Why, 
this is only the old story of what occurs, I sus- 
pect, in nearly all families. Wife and I have 
more discussions over the management of our 
children than over anything else ; but we know 
that we both love them and desire their good, 
and, when we differ, we talk kindly over our 
respective methods, and pray over them, too, 
and soon come to an agreement. Perhaps you 

and Mrs. A have not prayed enough 

over this matter." 

"I could not pray," sobbed the woman, "I 
was so hurt!" 

"I propose that Dr. N pray now," I 

said, and, by a common impulse, we all fell on 
our knees, and the doctor did pray, and prayed 
with a heart in fullest sympathy with the dis- 
tressed couple, and, it seemed to me, in very 
unison with the pity felt for them by a sympa- 
thizing Saviour. • • 

When we rose, the doctor, in a clear, quiet 
way, said, "I see it all now. You both love 



42 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



this dear child, and your love has made you, in 
the one case, too indulgent, and in the other, 
perhaps, too strict. You both desire her wel- 
fare. Let me tell you that you cannot do her 
a worse wrong than to let discord enter your 
home. The Spirit of God flies from the abodes 
of strife. It seems to me, madam, that your 
husband is right in wishing Annie to remain a 
school-girl for at least another year, and to fa- 
miliarize herself with household avocations; 
and you, perhaps, have been too impatient 
under opposition to your views. Think it all 
over, and I am sure you will see that I am 
right." 

Tears were running down the man's cheeks,, 
and the woman, with a bowed head, murmured, 
as if to herself, "I have been very wicked — 
very wicked!" 

"Where is Annie? Cannot I see her?" asked 
the doctor ; and it was a relief when the mother 
left us to call her. 

The doctor took the girl gently by the hand^ 
upon her entering, and said: "My child, I bap- 
tized you when your parents gave you to the 
Lord. Promise me that you will obey them, 
arid do all that you can for their comfort." 

She replied, "I will," and then the doctor 
added: "Now, I want to see you all at our 



Peacemaking. 



43 



prayer-meeting to-morrow night ; and, besides, 
I have a special invitation to you all from Mrs. 
N that you will be present at a little re- 
ception we are to have at the manse on next 
Tuesday evening, the twentieth anniversary of 
our marriage." 

There was a perceptible brightness in the 
aspect of the group as we left them ; and my 
companion ejaculated, as we reached the street, 
"God make our words as the precious oint- 
ment of Aaron!" 



EXTRACT VIII. 



THE PRESBYTERY. 

April 10, 1866. — I returned last night from 
a five days' absence, in attendance upon the 
spring meeting of presbytery, as the repre- 
sentative of our church. It cost me consid- 
erable effort, and some inconvenience, to leave 
home and business, but the desire of the ses- 
sion that I should go was so urgent, and was 
so enforced by the consideration that my re- 
fusal would bring upon the church the reproach 
of having to report "no elder present," that I 
stifled all objections and made my arrange- 
ments to go. I am thankful now that I did go. 

The anticipation of the mission at once 
brought to my consciousness the fact that I 
was woefully deficient in my knowledge of 
church order and parliamentary law. I set to 
work diligently to inform myself on these sub- 
jects. I conferred, also, with our pastor in 
regard to the business, ordinary and special, 
which might be expected to claim the attention 
of presbytery. So, trained and drilled, I made 
my appearance in time for the opening service, 
44 



The Presbytery. 



45 



at W , a neat little railroad town, where 

some capitalists had established a cotton fac- 
tory, which gave employment to a large portion 
of the inhabitants. 

My feeling of strangeness soon wore off before 
the cordial reception accorded me from every 
quarter. Not unfrequently I was addressed by 
the term "brother." The initial services were 
impressive, and the sermon by the venerable 

Mr. B — , the last moderator, from John 

xv. 8, tracing the duty of fruitfulness on the 
part of believers to the love bestowed upon 
them in the work of him who could call God 
his "Father," and the grace conferred upon 
them in permitting and enabling them to 
"glorify" this Father, was a forcible appeal 
for consecration to all the followers of the 
Lord Jesus Christ. 

In constituting the presbytery, to my dis- 
may I heard my name nominated for the office 
of Temporary Clerk. The nomination, I ob- 
served, came from one of the junior members 

of the body. My good patron, Dr. N — , 

catching my look of embarrassment, rose and 
stated that he feared this custom of thrusting 
an office, of which they knew nothing, upon 
new recruits had in it more of the mischief- 
loving humor of the college boys' custom of 



46 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



" hazing " than of the regard for expediency 
and decorum which should characterize an 
ecclesiastical court, and moved that I should 
be excused, and somebody else, whom he 
named, be put in my place. The proposition 
was carried. In the appointment of commit- 
tees, I found I was assigned to several places; 
and I was glad, in this capacity, to render some 
service in the prosecution of the business of the 
body. The impressions I have brought away 
from this first attendance upon a church 
congress of this kind have been altogether 
pleasant. 

First, It was pleasant to find myself, for 
a series of days, in a purely religious atmos- 
phere, from which the gross disturbances of 
worldly pursuits and competitions were ban- 
ished, and where good-will and Christian love 
beamed in every face and spake in every utter- 
ance. 

Second, The half-hour morning prayer-meet- 
ings were refreshing seasons, in which a 
heavenly dew, which proved to be manna, fell 
upon the opening of each day ; and the sermons 
at night seemed to grow better as they suc- 
ceeded one another, perhaps from the quick- 
ened appetite of those who came to hear them. 
The sacramental service on the Sabbath morn- 



The Presbytery. 



47 



ing, with a Sunday-school meeting in the after- 
noon, and an eloquent sermon at night, made 
this last day of the feast a golden one. 

Third, I was struck with the good humor — I 
might call it, in some instances, hilarity — which 
characterized the intercourse of the clerical part 
of our body. The cordiality of their greetings, 
and the ringing laughter which often attended 
their colloquies, convinced me that the phrase 
"sour-faced Presbyterians " was a slander, grow- 
ing, most probably, out of the sour-mindedness 
of the critics who used it. 

Fourth, I gained an immense amount of in- 
formation in regard to the methods and results 
of the working of our church, and an enlarged 
conviction, I trust, of the duty of Christians 
devoting more thought, prayer, and money to 
the support of evangelical enterprises. The 
work done is a success, like one of those clear- 
ings which I often met with on my journey to 

W , showing cultivated gaps in the forest, 

but revealing, each one, the immense stretches 
of timber land yet to be subdued. 

Fifth, One of the pleasantest recollections 
that I retain is that of my intercourse with 
the hospitable family among whom I found 
my home. The household consisted of Mrs. 
H , a lady of commanding person, from 



48 



Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



which all uncomfortable stateliness was re- 
moved, and with a sweet aspect, in which 
dignity was softened by kindness; her three 
daughters 3 two of whom were grown, while the 
third was a merry school-girl, and two sons, 
both holding positions in the cotton mills. All 
were professed Christians except the younger 
son and "Babe," as they still called the 
youngest girl. They were staunch Presby- 
terians, and knew why they were so ; and were 
zealous and intelligent supporters of the church, 
who, through their familiarity with the religious 
papers and periodicals, kept themselves abreast 
with its movements. I regard it as a special 
blessing to have been associated with such a 
family, and to have witnessed, as I am sure I 
have done, the power of religion to add a 
charm distinctively its own to natural beauty 
and to cultivated grace. 

Sixth, One thing more I must not overlook. 

My fellow-lodger at Mrs. H 's was the 

Hev. Mr. McW , a young minister, who 

is laboring in a frontier district of our presby- 
tery. Frequent conversations with him have 
stirred my heart with new emotions of admira- 
tion for, and sympathy with, the noble and 
self-denying work of these home missionaries. 
That young evangelist has been to me almost a 



The Presbytery. 



49 



new revelation of the spirit of Christianity. 
He has convinced me that apostolic zeal and 
heroism are not dead. If ever I fail in time to 
come to speak a word in defence of the class to 
which he belongs, or to give of my substance 
for their support, "let my tongue cleave to the 
roof of my mouth, and my right hand forget 
ner cunning." 



4 



EXTEACT IX. 

AN INQUIRER. 

Sunday, September 2. — To-day I have had to 
undertake a duty of a kind so serious and deli- 
cate that I have always shrunk from it. It is that 
of guiding a soul to Christ. To speak, in general 
terms, of the claims of Christ to the confidence 
and love of men; to explain, generally, the 
way of salvation through faith in his name, or 
to urge men, generally, to embrace this salva- 
tion, has not seemed difficult, nor have I hesi- 
tated to attempt it, in my poor way, as the op- 
portunity has been given me. But to sit alone 
with an anxious inquirer, to see him struggling 
with a distress which, perhaps, he is unable to 
explain, and groping after a deliverance which 
he cannot discover; to unravel the complexity 
of his spiritual condition, and apply the balm 
which is needed for his heart's sore — this has 
seemed to me an exercise of tact and wisdom 
of which I was incapable. I have been dis- 
posed — as, I suppose, most private Christians 
are when such cases are brought to their no- 
tice — to say, "Let us go talk with the minis- 
50 



An Inquirer. 



51 



ter." In the appeal which was made to me to- 
day I could not do this. 

I had hardly got seated in my library, after 
returning from the morning's service, when S. 

W , a young man whom I knew very 

well, was shown into the room, and addressed 

me abruptly: "Mr. B , I want to talk 

with you; I want you to pray for me!" 

His look and voice betrayed some deep emo- 
tion, and his language, of course, let me see 
that it was of a religious nature. I took him 
by the hand, and said to him, "My dear 

S , sit down; be composed, and let us 

talk a while. What is it that is so troubling 
you?" 

"Oh!" he said, "that sermon this morn- 
ing! It seemed to show me that I have been 
all wrong when I thought that I was all right. 
What am I to do with Jesus which is called 
Christ? What have I been doing with him? 
I feel more than ever that I need religion, and 
yet there is something here in religion which I 
have not understood. What am I to do with 
Jesus? And what has Jesus to do with me?" 

The text had been Pilate's inquiry, in Mat- 
thew xxvii. 22. 

"This is not a sudden feelicg with you? 
You have been convinced of your need of re- 
ligion before?" I said, inquiringly. 



52 



Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



"Oh! yes," he replied. "You know how re- 
ligiously I was brought up. The impressions 
of my early years have never been lost. The 
example of my father and mother, too, always 
kept me from questioning the reality and value 
of religion when sceptical suggestions occurred 
to me, or were made to me by others. When 
a boy, I tried to be, and was, I suppose, as the 
term goes, a 'good boy.' When I grew up, and 
went into business, I carried with me a tender 
conscience, for which I have often been ridi- 
culed, and I kept constantly in mind the dis- 
tinction between right and wrong. I was de- 
termined that my employers should find no 
fault with me, and they never have done so. 
When I went into society, of which I have 
been very fond, I did not abandon my reli- 
gious habits, as I regarded them; but found 
that my desire to please my companions and 
my aversion to appearing singular led me often 
into compliance with practices which I could 
not justify to myself when the excitement was 
over. I have a thousand times said to myself, 
this plan upon which I am living, if there is 
any religion in it, is giving me neither strength 
nor comfort. This conviction has troubled me 
fearfully of late, and it was in my mind when 
I went to church this morning. As Dr. N 



An Inquiree. 



53 



proceeded with his sermon and made some of 
his sharp applications, the thought occurred to 
me, almost like a flash, may not this be the 
difficulty with me? I have not done what I 
ought to have done with Jesus. Passages 
from the Bible about Jesus, which I had been 
reading all my life without any distinct impres- 
sion of their meaning, now came crowding 
upon me with a clearness and a force which 
they had never had before. The way that I 
had been treading seemed to become all dark ; 
the way that I needed to take seemed all dark, 
too ; and in my bewilderment I have come to 
you, for I have confidence in your religion, to 
ask you to instruct and advise me." 

He paused, and looked at me with an exhausted 
expression, for he had said much more than I can 
recall. His heart was full, and he had poured 
it out with a remarkable degree of coherency 
and fluency. I thought of the story of the young 
man in Matthew xix. 16-23, and quietly read 
it to him. "Don't you see," I added, "that 
this young man was taking no account of sin, 
as an obstacle in the way of eternal life, in his 
idea of religion? He would earn eternal life 
by the doing of good things. His disquietude 
of mind was due, not to any doubt as to the 
reality of his obedience as a means of gaining 



54 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 

it, but to a fear that the measure of that obedi- 
ence might be defective. 1 What lack I yet ? ' he 
asks, 'what good more ought I to do?' The 
Saviour teaches him that obedience, to be 
genuine, must admit no gradations of less or 
more. It must be a total conformity to the 
law of God — such as would make a rich man 
willing to sell all that he possessed and give 
the proceeds to the poor, if such a command 
were laid upon him. A religion based upon 
obedience must show an obedience which is 
entire. It must spring from the heart of a 
man and pervade his whole inner and outer 
life. It must have in it no weakness, of will, 
no inconstancy of action or affection. Oh ! my 
friend, what mortal man can abide such a test ? 
The young man could not, and you and I cannot. 
Our obedience is rotten at the very base, and our 
deviations and omissions, on one side or another, 
are perpetually revealing our weakness and dis- 
turbingx)ur peace. All such deviations and omis- 
sions are departures from righteousness, or evi- 
dences of a sinful nature expressing itself in sinful 
acts. Now, here is where ' Jesus which is called 
Christ ' has something, or rather everything, to 
do for us and with us. Read your New Testa- 
ment and you will see that his whole work is 
for sinners and with sinners. Hear St. Paul 



An Inquieee. 



55 



proclaiming his view of the gospel, ' This is a 
faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, 
that Christ Jesus came into the world to save 
sinners.' Do you not see a meaning in this 
passage, and in a hundred others like it, which, 
perhaps, has never been disclosed to you 
before ? Where your efforts at obedience to 
the law of God have left you Jesus finds you ; 
that is, in the position of a sinner, and he 
offers to put you in the position which you 
have been vainly seeking by your previous 
effort, that is, that of a righteous man in the 
sight of God. To this end he says, 'believe 
in me, trust in me, come to me. Put my work 
in the place of your old self and its work, and 
find the ground of your salvation in me and 
my work as you once did in your supposed 
obedience.' " 

Here my hearer, who had been listening 
with rapt attention while I had talked, broke 
in with the remark, " This faith perplexes me ! 
I surely believe in Christ. I have always done 
so. I have tried to get my ideas of religion 
from him as an infallible teacher." 

"You have believed in him as a teacher," I 
replied, "but have you believed in him as a 
Saviour from sin ? You have believed in him 
as Nicodemus did when he said, ' we know that 



56 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 

thou art a teacher come from God,' but have 
you believed in him as Peter did, when, with 
the waters giving way under his feet, he cried, 
' Lord, save me ' ? " 

He had almost a startled look as I asked 
these questions, and an embarrassed one at the 
same time. 

"Let me explain what I mean," I continued. 
" You have been on a long strain of mind this 
morning. I can see that you are physically 
exhausted. You want refreshment. There, in 
the next room is my table, spread with our 
Sunday dinner. I shall ask you, directly, to 
go in with me and share our meal, You will 
believe in the actual existence of the articles of 
food you see, in their wholesome properties, 
and in their capacity to relieve faintness and 
hunger ; but if you do not believe in the sense 
of using these articles, appropriating them and 
incorporating them into your own personality, 
your faith will, certainly, bring you no relief. 
Now, Jesus offers himself to men as ' the bread 
of God which came down from heaven and 
giveth life unto the world.' The faith which 
the presentation of bread requires is a faith 
which applies it as food, which stretches forth 
the hand and takes and eats it. In such a 
way, in believing in Jesus, we bring our needs. 



An Inquirer. 



57 



our sins, our emptiness and our guilt to him, 
and rely upon his grace and power to relieve 

and remove them. S ," I said to him, 

solemnly, for I felt the occasion to be an in- 
tensely solemn one, " are you hungering after 
peace with God, the pardon of sin, and the 
possession of a truly religious or holy na- 
ture?" 

He said, "I am sure I am! " 

"Do you see in Christ the bread which God 
has provided to meet this hunger?" 

" It seems all clear to me now," was his re- 
ply. 

"Then take, and eat, and live forever!" I 
said, springing to my feet in my emotion; and 
he, with a similar motion and a beaming coun- 
tenance, responded, " I will ; I do ! " 

"Now, let us pray," I said; and with such 
sympathy with him as took his soul into union 
with my own, I commended him to God as one 
new-born into his family, and besought for him 
the nurture of the Holy Spirit, that he might 
be kept in all time to come, building upon 
Jesus as the foundation of his religion, and 
feeding upon him as the bread of God. 

He declined, of course, my invitation to 
dine ; and we parted at the door, almost in 
silence, under the consciousness, on both sides, 



58 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



that a great event had transpired in the his- 
tory of a human soul. My confidence in it, 
that it was a real transaction, was founded, not 
so much on the excitement produced by the 
sermon to which my young friend had listened, 
as upon the training he had received, the reli- 
gious experimenting through which he had 
passed, and the evident sincerity and eager- 
ness of desire for light and relief which his 
previous disappointment had inspired. 

I saw him again, for a moment, at the close 
of service to-night, and as I clasped his hand, 
and said, in a low tone, "Is Jesus still the way, 
the truth and the life?" the warm pressure 
he gave me, and the bright expression of his 
countenance were the satisfactory reply. 



EXTKACT X. 



THE SABBATH-SCHOOL. 

Sunday, November 10. — I am satisfied that 
the Sabbath -school will present itself to a 
thoughtful elder of a church as a legitimate 
and important part of his domain, and that, in 
some direction, he will give it a portion of his 
attention. It is a modern institution only in 
the sense of being a means of giving religious 
instruction to the young and ignorant of a 
community generally, or irrespective of their 
relation to a church. Immemorially, the chil- 
dren of the church, as all the children of com- 
municants, who had received baptism, were 
assumed to be, were placed under a course of 
training in order that they might be prepared, 
at a suitable age, to ratify their church rela- 
tionship by coming intelligently and heartily 
to the communion. They formed a class of 
catechumens. Unbaptized applicants for mem- 
bership in the church were placed in the same^ 
or a similar class. The school, therefore, may 
be said to have existed always ; although, as it 
was not necessarily, nor perhaps commonly, 
confined to the Sabbath as the time for con- 
59 



60 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



ducting it, it was not called a Sabbath-school. 
Raikes, and the other founders of the modern 
Sabbath-school, undertook to bring the out- 
lying masses of children who had none to 
christianize them under the influence of re- 
ligious culture by bringing them together on 
the Sabbath, as a day on which they were 
exempt from worldly labor, for the purpose of 
receiving instruction. The work was a good 
one, and in the line of the church's duty, and 
church officers and members largely engaged 
in it. Ultimately, and perhaps gradually, the 
church-school has become absorbed in the 
Sabbath-school, as the function of the latter 
seemed to be akin to that of the former. To 
my mind, this delegation of the oversight of 
its catechumens has been an unfortunate one. 
But, inasmuch as it has taken place, it be- 
hooves those who have the charge of the Sab- 
bath-school to make it as efficient as possible 
in supplying the culture which the church owes 
to its baptized children, and the unenlightened 
candidates for membership in it. As an officer 
of the church, therefore, I feel that the Sabbath- 
school has a special claim upon my services. 

For several years I have been a teacher in 
our Sabbath-school, and have found the work 
increasingly pleasant. I have taught classes 



The Sabbath- School. 61 



of both boys and girls, and have discovered 
equal points of attraction in each. I have 
thought, studied, and prayed hard that I might 
acquire the art of winning these young souls 
to myself, in order that I might win them to 
Christ. I have aimed, first, to impress them 
with the belief that I felt a personal interest in 
each one of them, and then to make them feel 
at ease with me, without losing their respect. 
There is such a thing, I am convinced, as an 
organic tie which may be established between 
a Sunday-school teacher and his class, under 
the prompting of which the teacher may, with 
a special fondness, say, "my class," and the 
pupil, in the same spirit, may say, "my 
teacher.'' This tie I have sought to cultivate, 
and to connect the sentiment which it implies 
with the practical purpose of giving to my 
scholars the knowledge of God, in order that 
they might serve him. Without assuming any 
special austerity of manner, I have endeavored 
to impress my class with the idea that in the 
school-room they were as much in the house 
of God as in the church ; and that my business 
is to teach them the religion of the Bible, and 
to persuade them to practice it, as much as it 
is the minister's. Every now and then I have 
been accustomed to bring to them some one of 



62 Extracts from ax Elder's Diary. 



the many passages of the Scripture in which 
the gospel is epitomized, as if I had found a 
fresh treasure, and set them to commit it to 
memory and recite it to me. I require each 
scholar on entering my class to learn and 
repeat 1 Chronicles xxyiii. 9, as a sort of ma- 
triculating rite. I think my methods have not 
been without fruits, for during my teacher- days 
I have had the joy of seeing some score of 
pupils connect themselves with the church. 

I am revolving these reflections to-night, be- 
cause my teacher-days are ended, at least for a 
season. I have been chosen by the teachers, 
and appointed by the session, to the office of 
superintendent of our school. This may be 
promotion and an enlargement of influence, 
but I foresee in it a serious curtailment of en- 
joyment. I must cease to use and to hear the 
terms which have become dear as household 
words to me — " my class," " my teacher." I 
must act now very much through other hands. 
I want to get a definite conception of the work 
I am to do in my new position. 

Certainly, believing, as I do, that the Sab- 
bath-school's right to exist lies in its being an 
organic factor of the church, its function must 
be that which the Lord assigned to his church 
when he said to the founders of it, " Go, make 



The Sabbath-School. 63 



disciples of all nations; teaching them to ob- 
serve all things whatsoever I have commanded 
you." It must be a teaching institute, like the 
church. It must be a branch of the church, 
vitalized by the same principle, and aiming, in 
all its details, to produce the same result, that 
is, the making of disciples of Christ. What the 
preacher and pastor does in his higher sphere, 
as the instructor of a congregation, the Sunday- 
school teacher is expected to do in a lower one. 
He must be the bearer of religious truth to the 
children of a community, ministering the bread 
of life to those who come from homes where 
there are none able or disposed to give it to 
them. 

I am glad to feel that in undertaking the 
charge of this school I am not engaging in a 
work which is collateral to, or independent of, 
that of the church, but one which is normally 
identical with this, so that I shall be laboring 
side by side with our minister in the spiritual 
culture of this field. I shall encourage myself 
by the assurance that I can claim for the work 
of this school all the aid and support which 
Christ has promised to grant to the work of his 
church. 

If, now, I can secure — which I shall endea- 
vor to do — a concentration of spirit and effort 



64 EXTKACTS FROM AN ELDER'S DlARY. 

on the part of my teachers, in the fixing in 
these young minds of right ideas of Christ and 
his religion, I may hope to make of our school 
an efficient arm of the church, and may safely 
leave much, as to the methods of instruction 
employed in particular cases, to the discretion 
of the teachers. 

May the Lord, who has laid this new burden 
upon me, so guide me in the bearing of it that 
I may have the joy of gathering many sheaves 
for his garner out of this interesting harvest- 
field! 



EXTKACT 



XL 



A REVIVAL. 

Sunday, December, 1873. — Oar church and 
community have been signally blessed during 
the last six months, with what, I think, may 
safely be called a genuine revival of religion. 
An interest, amounting to a profound concern, 
in regard to personal religion, has prevailed to 
a degree which has made the fact phenomenal. 
It seems to me that the methods have been 
legitimate, and that everything extraneous to 
the simple operation of the truth and the Spirit 
of God have been excluded. Faithful preach- 
ing we have always had, and I believe faithful 
Sabbath-school instruction. Family training 
has been pretty well observed in our congrega- 
tion, and the testimony of consistent living, on 
the part of a good portion of our members, has 
not been lacking. These have not been without 
their results. But special, as well as ordinary, 
manifestations of the Spirit's power, I am sat- 
isfied, we are warranted by the Scriptures to 
expect and pray for. He who, like the wind, 
works as he listeth, may evince his presence by 
the measure, as well as by the form, in which 
65 



66 EXTEACTS FEOM AN ELDEE'S DlA.EY. 



his agency is demonstrated. Nations may be 
spiritually born in a day as well as men. 

Early in the last summer certain persons in 
our various denominations were led to confer 
in regard to an effort to awaken thoughtfulness 
on the part of our people to the claims of Christ 
to their faith and obedience, and a resolution 
was adopted to open a daily union prayer- 
meeting, at an hour preceding the business 
period of the day, in the lecture-room of our 
church, which was central and accessible. It 
was to be under the control of leading laymen 
of the different churches. a No speakers were 
invited from abroad. Our clergymen were 
asked to give their presence and aid, exactly 
as other attendants were expected to do. No 
unusual services were announced ; no choirs 
were collected and trained; no extraordinary 
attractions were introduced or advertised. 

After notice given in the various pulpits, 
the meetings commenced on a Monday morn- 
ing in May last. They were limited to an 
hour. From the start they were well attended, 
and the congregations grew from day to day. 
Leaders from the different churches, chosen 
by the committee who had the movement in 
charge, presided in succession. They seemed 
to be singularly gifted in the way of ordering 



A Revival. 



67 



the exercises and their expositions of the word 
of God. They kept the tide of thought and 
feeling moving without a pause, calling for 
prayers and counsels from particular persons 
and opening the door for voluntary remarks as 
any one present was disposed to make them. 
The hours passed pleasantly and rapidly, and 
there were few who had been induced to be 
present on one occasion who did not feel 
moved to come again. 

It soon became apparent that these meetings 
were having an influence upon the public mind. 
Multitudes resorted to them who had previously 
shown no relish for religious exercises. Men 
who had, heretofore, been fixed in their indif- 
ference, or who had stifled their convictions of 
duty, now felt a fascination which brought 
them, with anxious faces and unvarying regu- 
larity, to the house of prayer. A mysterious 
power, counteracting the power of worldly 
things, had gone forth into the community. 
Religion might almost have been said to have 
become a theme of popular discussion. Chris- 
tians were emboldened to propose it, and in- 
quirers were found on every hand to confess 
their willingness to receive instruction. In 
several instances it occurred that persons, at 
the time when free remarks were called for, 



68 EXTRACTS FROM AN ELDER'S DlARY. 

rose and asked for the prayers of the meeting. 
No demonstrations of this kind were solicited, 
and no adjuncts in the way of stimulants to 
feeling, or tests of purpose, were employed. 
Whatever personal influence was used to per- 
suade men to embrace religion was used in 
private conference. That a work so evidently 
deep and wide-spread should go on so quietly 
was a marvel. 

The interest in our own congregation became 

so extensive that Dr. N , in order to meet 

the craving for instruction which accompanied 
it, appointed a short daily evening service, in 
which he might adapt his teachings to the dis- 
covered needs of his own flock; and at the 
close of this, he, with the session, engaged in 
conversation with such as desired counsel. 
Many touching incidents attended these inter- 
views. Later on, the session commenced hold- 
ing meetings frequently, for the purpose of re- 
ceiving the profession of those who gave evi- 
dence of entertaining a true faith in Christ. 
There was no hurry, no confusion, in this me- 
thod. 

These daily meetings were kept up through 
the summer. The result has been a decided 
lifting-up of the tone of the religious life among 
God's people, and the addition to the member- 



A Eevival. 



69 



ship of our church of about one hundred and 
twenty souls, and there is every reason to be- 
lieve that in most of these latter cases the con- 
version has been a radical one. 

One of the remarkable things about this 
movement is the impression which has been 
made upon that portion of the community 
which has not come under its direct influence. 
There is a silent recognition of a fact which 
seems to be too patent to be pronounced un- 
real, although the nature of it is inexplicable 
to these observers. We hear no words of ridi- 
cule, no charges of fanaticism, no questioning 
of the sincerity or the intelligence of those who 
have professed repentance for sin and faith in 
a Saviour. The unexpressed conviction of the 
onlooking crowd, if put into words, would be, 
" This is the Lord's doing ; it is marvellous in 
our eyes!" 

Such a season of grace, permitting God's chil- 
dren on earth to share something of the joy of the 
angels in heaven over sinners repenting, calls, it 
seems to me, for some serious reflections. 

First, There is danger in the spiritual sphere, 
as well as in the natural one, that a rich harvest 
may invite to indulgence in rest, and a release 
from the obligation to labor. God has wrought 
so wonderfully for us, the sophistry of our car- 



70 



Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



hal nature may suggest, that there is no neces- 
sity, at least for the present, for our working. 
I must guard against this fallacy and put our 
people on their guard against it. 

Second, The true view, certainly, is that 
grace, in showing us the ground of our salva- 
tion in Christ's work, instead of absolving the 
recipient from working, furnishes him with a 
new and special incentive and encouragement 
to work. The seasons of langour which, it is 
said, often succeed revivals of religion, ought 
not to occur. They are a reversal of the order 
of God's economy. Grace is in order to life 
and activity. 

Third, These new converts, many of them 
young, who have come into our Christian family, 
will need parental care and nurture at the hands 
of the church. It is a gross inconsistency and 
an unnatural cruelty to rejoice over a new-born 
soul and then leave it to starve. These tender 
plants must be watched, and nourished, and 
trained ; and here I see a large future work for 
the officers of the church and its maturer mem- 
bers. The wisdom of a Solomon in the edifica- 
tion of the structure, added to the zeal of a 
David in the gathering of the material, may 
issue in the rearing of a permanent and glorious 
temple. And, 



A Revival. 



71 



Fourth, A revival in a church is illusory if 
it does not produce a manifest and abiding 
elevation in the scale of piety in the whole 
body. The quickening or reviving of a church 
is to be evinced, not by the numerical magni- 
tude of its constituency, but by the spirit of 
active godliness which animates it. 

God grant that in time to come, when the 
great Husbandman shall come to look at our 
now thrifty fig tree, he may find it laden with 
fruit as well as enveloped in leaves! 



EXTRACT XII. 



A ROMANCE. 

September 12, 1878. — I had occasion, during 
the last month, while on a business trip to one 
of our lively western cities, to witness an illus- 
tration of what I might call Providence in ro- 
mance, I was entertained for several weeks at 

the residence of a Mr. II W , a 

worthy gentleman who has risen to the position 
of a foremost merchant in the place. Charac- 
ter and energy have elevated him to compara- 
tive wealth, which he has used liberally in 
gratifying his tastes and multiplying his com- 
forts. His home was a pretty, rural one, on 
the edge of the city, to which a street-railway 
line, with a station near by, gave all the ad- 
vantages of the corporation. It struck me as 
a model nest for the amiable pair who dwelt 
within it. It was handsome without being os- 
tentatious, commodious in its arrangements, 
and adorned to the extent of every reasonable 
desire. Pleasant prospects opened out on 
every side, and a spacious lawn in front sloped 
down to the margin of a picturesque little river, 
72 



A Romance. 



73 



along whose banks a file of giant oaks stood as 
warders of the grounds. 

All these features were interesting to me for 
a special reason. The master and mistress of 
this comely mansion were, in a certain sense, 
my children. At some time near the close of 

the late civil war, the former, Mr. W- — , 

then a young man of perhaps twenty-one years, 
appeared in our city as the agent of a company 
of capitalists in the West, to superintend the 
management of certain cotton estates which 
they had leased or purchased. His appear- 
ance and manners were attractive, and his tes- 
timonials were of an unquestionable character. 
I was introduced to him soon after his arrival, 
and found him frank, intelligent, and right- 
minded. At my suggestion, he became a lodger 
in the family of a particular friend of my wife, 
a lady who had been left a widow some years 
before, without means, and who had supported 
herself and her two little daughters by taking 

boarders. Mr. W— retained his quarters 

in the household for some two years, identify- 
ing himself so completely with the home-circle 
that a strong bond of confidence and affection 
sprang up between them. The younger child 
was about , seven years old, bewitching in her 
beauty, her gracefulness, and her vivacity. In 



74 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



the sweet, spontaneous lovingness of her own 
heart, she drew the love of all other hearts to 
her. She and the young lodger became fast 
friends. He filled for her the place of father, 
brother, companion, and playmate; she to him 
was the object upon whom all the ardor of a 
generous nature, which, during his exile from 
former associations, seemed to craye an outlet, 
expended itself. 

At length Mr. W — , or Robert, as most 

of us had learned to call him, having com- 
pleted his mission, was recalled by his em- 
ployers. The parting was a hard trial for him 
and the little Jeannette. But, as we say, sor- 
row does not lodge long in a young heart. 
She said little about him — rather avoided allu- 
sion to him, but carefully treasured up the 
keepsakes he had left her. Two years passed 
in the widow's home, and then God called her 
to himself. The elder daughter was adopted 
by a kinsman, and Jeannette was added to our 
flock. Her nature called for a warm atmos- 
phere in which to grow, and she found it in 
the tender sympathy we felt for her loneliness, 
and in the regard excited by her confiding and 
winning ways. She was a sweet graft on our 
family tree — one with us, and yet unlike. I 
gave her every advantage that my own chil- 



A Romance. 



75 



dren had had, and with her fine talents and 
avidity for knowledge she ripened into a cul- 
tured womanhood. One peculiarity about her 
was, that she seemed unconscious of the at- 
tractions which every one recognized, and 
rather repelled than sought admiration or at 
tention. As the result, she confined her shin- 
ing to the circle of her home, like a jewel shut 
up in its casket. 

In the meantime our young friend, Robert 
W — — , had not allowed himself to be forgot- 
ten. Every now and then letters came from 
him to his little Jeannette. On her birthdays, 
and at other times, handsome presents were 
received from him. Occasionally, he sent a 
picture of himself, and asked for one of her in 
return. His love for the child retained its 
place so freshly in his heart that he seemed to 
be incapable of appreciating the lapse of years 
and the changes it had wrought, and addressed 
her in the same frank and hearty way that he 
had done when she used to clamber on his 
knee in her mother's home. His letters were 
full of amusing incongruities when he referred 
to her, but managed to let us know that he was 
prospering in business and acquiring both repu- 
tation and wealth. Shortly after his return 
to the West he had connected himself with the 
Presbyterian Church. 



76 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 

One day a telegram was received from him,, 
telling us that he was on his way South, and 
would stop and spend a day or two with us. 
Theise tidings created a flutter in the house- 
hold, setting every mind to work at framing 
conjectures, anticipations, and devices for enter- 
taining our "mythical relative," as we had been 
wont to call him. He arrived at the designated 
time, and stood before us with hardly a per- 
ceptible change from the image of him left 
upon our memory when he had vanished from 
our sight ten years before. There was the 
same genial air in countenance and manner 
which used to make him magnetic; the same 
ingenuousness pervading his address, in which 
ardor was combined with delicacy, which had 
marked him in his youth ; and as the result, 
in a few moments we were all as much at ease 
together as if we had parted only yesterday. 

All were, of course, interested in seeing the 
meeting between him and Jeannette. As hand 
after hand was rapidly grasped, he came to her, 
and, almost overcome by his emotion, cried, 
" Oh, Jeanie ! Jeannie ! my little one, do I see 
you again?" 

With a smile, placid as usual, she said, "I 
almost wish I could be a little one again, that 
you might be sure that it is really I ! " 



A Romance. 



77 



"Oh, no!" he exclaimed, "I see my little 
one all here and — so much more! Yon must 
tell me all about it — how the little one has 
grown up to be the splendid— well, I mean the 
woman that she is ; but, to me, it will be the 
£ little one ' that I see all the way through! " 

He spent two days with us, during which 
he and Jeannette were much together. The 
period of time during which they had been 
separated was reviewed step by step, and by 
the time he took his departure the two streams 
of life seemed to have become as closely inter- 
mingled as they had been in her childhood. 

The evening after he had left, she and I were 
alone, when, in a rather embarrassed way, she 
said to me, "Uncle" (I had taught her to call 
me thus), "Robert, I mean Mr. W , ex- 
pects to return here in about a month." 

"Well," I said, "we shall all be glad to see 
him — shall we not ? " 

"Yes," she replied, "I suppose so; but," 
she added, in a voice dropping low, if she were 
almost afraid to hear her words, "he told me 
that when he came he should ask me to become 
his wife. He said I belonged to him, that God 
had given me to him, and kept me all these 
years for him, and that his life would be a 
worthless blank unless I shared it with him. 



78 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 

He did not want me to say yes or no then, but 
asked me to consult with you before I gave 
him my answer. Oh," she exclaimed, as she 
finished her communication, "he is so good 
and kind that I could not be offended with him ; 
but I had not thought of this ! " 

She was in tears when she stopped. I was 
not surprised at this revelation ; and said to 
her, "My child, perhaps God has been think- 
ing about it. We must look at the matter reli- 
giously. One thing is certain, we know Mr. 

"W to be a man, in the fullest sense, 

worthy of respect, confidence, and even affec- 
tion. It is strange that with his many engaging 
qualities and his social disposition he has not 
been involved in an attachment with some one 
long ago. His love for you seems to have kept 
pace with his years. Don't you think it is real ? " 

" He says it is, and that it cannot be anything 
else, for it is a part of his very life," was her 
reply. 

"And don't you think that you have a regard 
for him, which may possibly be what is called 
love?" I continued. 

"Uncle," she said, looking me earnestly in 
the face, " beyond you and your dear wife and 
children, there has been nobody in the world 
for me to love except Mr. W , who has 



A Romance. 



79 



strangely cared for me all my life, I may say, 
and whose tender interest in me lias seemed to 
unite him inseparably with all my thoughts and 
affections, although I never thought of it as 
the love that leads to marriage." 

"My dear," I said, "we must lay this subject 
before God. If his hand is in it, his voice will 
give an answer to your perplexity. You have 
time to reflect, and to test your feelings, and to 
pray for divine illumination. You are God's 
child, and if you go to him for counsel he will 
not suffer you to err in your decision." 

In due time Mr. W reappeared, a 

favorable response rewarded his devotion ; and 
in a few months later he returned to claim his 
bride. In the presence of a few friends Dr. 

N- united the handsome pair, and in a 

few hours they left on the train for their future 
home. As they drove from our door my ejacu- 
lation was, "It is the story of Isaac and 
Rebekah over again!" My wife, amidst her 
tears, exclaimed, " In thee the fatherless findeth 
mercy"; and an old colored mammy, who, like 
her class, was bound to be in the front at a leave- 
taking, gave vent to her Calvinistic faith in the 
words, " Sure, de good Lord has been knowin' 
of it all de time, and has jest been keepin 5 
these dear children for one another! " 



80 



Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



It was in the home of this happy couple, the 
abode of domestic virtue and sanctified affec- 
tion, that I have recently been sojourning ; and 
as I broke bread at their generous table, it was 
sweetened by the reflection that it was a fulfil- 
ment of the promise, "Cast thy bread upon 
the waters, for thou shalt find it after many 
days." 



EXTKACT XIII. 



A PESTILENCE. 

Sunday, November 9, 1879. — The November 
frosts have brought us deliverance from a 
deadly scourge, which for the past two mouths 
has been desolating this community. Early in 
the fall the suspicion that several cases of the 
yellow fever, the occasional plague of our south- 
ern seaboard, had occurred, had agitated the 
public mind. The certainty of the fact slowly 
revealed itself. The doubts of the most in- 
credulous at last gave way, and then the usual 
panic ensued. Every one who could find a 
retreat, near or far, fled. The multitude who 
could not get away remained to meet their fate, 
persuading themselves, however, that, on one 
ground or another, they would be exempt from 
the touch of the pestilence. I, who had passed 
through several seasons of this kind, and con- 
sidered myself acclimated, although I had never 
taken the fever, resolved, after removing my 
family to a place of safety, to stay at home and 
render such assistance as I could in caring for 
the sick. It has been a time of trying, and, I 
6 81 



I 



82 EXTEACTS FROM AN ELDER'S DlARY. 

trust, in many respects, profitable, experience 
to me. 

Nothing can be more depressing than to feel, 
day after day and night after night, that you 
are enfolded by the shadow of death. The 
dreary continuity and monotony with which 
one has to revolve in thought and conversation 
such topics as the new victims added to the 
list of patients, the latest symptoms of those 
under treatment,* and the fatal issue of the 
struggle in this case or that, are simply awful. 
Perhaps it is not strange that many persons at 
such seasons grow reckless, and resort to dis- 
sipation as an antidote to the gloom of their 
surroundings. It is said that while, during the 
prevalence of an epidemic, the ordinary branches 
of business are, for the most part, suspended, the 
saloons and places of revelry are patronized to 
an exceptional extent. The evidences of the in- 
tense, and even brutal, depravity which our fallen 
nature is capable of entertaining and exhibit- 
ing, which have come under my own notice, 
are astounding. Rapacity seems to leap, like 
a hungry wolf, upon a prostrate community, 
and gratify its appetite by extorting gain from 
A its needs and sufferings. A cold-blooded ava- 
rice can sit at its desk and calculate how the 
woes of a plague-smitten community, and even 



A Pestilence. 



83 



the terrors of Almighty God, can be coined 
into money. 

But I thank God that if these fearful chal- 
lenges call forth the enmity of the carnal mind 
to him, on the one hand, they give occasion on 
the other for beautiful exhibitions of faith, 
brotherly kindness, and self-sacrificing devo- 
tion to duty. Christian men and women have 
led the ranks of the helpers in this season of 
general distress, and have been foremost in 
providing means, devising methods, and per- 
sonally executing them for the relief of the 
afflicted multitude. A Spartan band have done 
a heroic work, and have done it, very largely, 
under the prompting of the spirit of Christ. 
It has not been a poetic work, which one might 
touch with a gloved hand, but one of sheer, 
homely labor, including the manifold services 
of the literal nurse, and oftentimes in scenes of 
squalor and upon subjects uncomely, if not re- 
pulsive. It is simply hospital work, without 
the advantage of the facilities which hospitals 
afford. One is tempted to ask, What place is 
there for spiritual ministrations under such 
circumstances? Often, it has to be confessed, 
there is none. To the patient, racked with 
bodily pain, raving with delirium, or sunk in 
unconsciousness, even the offering of a prayer 



84 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 

seems to be an unmeaning exercise Still, the 
Christian may find in his own experience that 
the humane element in his philanthropic work 
may be spiritualized, as an expression of the 
faith which works by love to his seen neighbor, 
through the love he bears to God, whom he 
cannot see. In Christ's name he may visit the 
sick, and put the cup of cold water to the 
thirsty lip, and the thought will awaken in his 
own heart, at least, motives and affections of 
an eminently spiritual nature. Certainly, I 
can testify that during these weary watchings 
by night and labors by day, I have enjoyed a 
sense of fellowship with my divine Master, and 
of the blessedness of union with him, which has 
rarely been vouchsafed to me elsewhere. The 
testimony which is given before the eye of the 
world, that religion is deed as well as profes- 
sion, is something which also invests even this 
drudgery of nursing with a spiritual aspect. 
Then, too, sometimes a soothing word may be 
spoken, or an allusion be made to the t; old, 
old story of Jesus and his love," which may 
fall like dew upon a withered soul. I recall an 
instance of this, which occurred one night as I 
was sitting alone by the bedside of a man of 
mature age, who was lying in that stage of ex- 
haustion which follows a severe attack of fever. 



A Pestilence. 



85 



He drew a long breath and murmured, " I feel 
as weak as a child." "Yes," I said, quietly, 
"God reminds us all sometimes that we are 
but little children. He would not have us 
forget the child's trust, nor the child's prayer. 
Put yourself in the position of a child again, 
and say, as you used to do at your mother's 
knee, ' Our Father which art in heaven ! ' As 
a little child, Jesus tells us, we must all enter 
into the kingdom of God. Kemember the 
lessons which were taught you in your child- 
hood ; the texts of Scripture, the sayings of the 
Saviour, the stories of the prodigal son, and of 
the dying thief, and the hymns which tell of 
the love of Jesus to us sinners! Oh, yes, it is 
well for us to be made to feel as little children ; 
for, as men, we fancy that we are too wise and 
two strong to need God, and so we forget him, 
and try to live without him ; and it is to make 
us willing to return to him that he throws us 
back into the weakness of childhood." And so 
I went on, for I saw that he was not offended, 
but interested, and soon his lip quivered, and 
the tears trickled down his face. I paused, 
fearing that his excitement might be injurious, 
and asked, " Shall I pray for you?" He gave 
me an earnest look and nodded his head. 
When I rose from my prayer, his eyes were 



86 



Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



closed, but he clasped the hand with which I 
had been holding his own, which was about 
the last sign of intelligence he showed. His 
stupor deepened till he died before the morn- 
ing. What passed between the Spirit of God 
and his soul lies beyond human ken ; but I am 
glad I was permitted to say to him what I did. 

Our pastor, Dr. N , has been assidu- 
ous in his attention to the sick and afflicted 
throughout the season. He has kept up, regu- 
larly, a morning service on the Sabbath and a 
weekly prayer-meeting. It has been an un- 
speakable solace to the limited band who could 
convene for worship to place themselves thus 
under the shadow of the Almighty's wings, 
and to be led out of the arid scenes through 
which they had been passing during the week, 
to the fountains of spiritual health and invigo- 
ration. Dr. N tells me that he is con- 
vinced that a minister's presence is needed, 
during an epidemic, more as a comforter to be- 
reaved households than as a counsellor to the 
sick and dying. 

"Never," was his remark, "have I been more 
impressed with the perilousness of suspending 
the soul's salvation upon the chances of a 
death-bed conversion. While the fight for 
natural life is going on, there is no opportunity 



A Pestilence. 



87 



for the religious teacher to interject his instruc- 
tions. But the poor surviving mourners — their 
case has touched my heart. Death by the 
plague is still — death; and for the loved one 
gone there is the same sorrow as that which 
floods a family at other times, and the same 
desire that the precious body should be laid in 
the ground with the usual testimonials of re- 
spect. I am satisfied that, if 1 have done any 
good this season, it has been mainly here, in 
the lifting-up of those who have been bowed 
down under the strokes of God's mysterious 
providence." 

His remark reminded me of the exclamation 
of a lady, not of his communion, as she grasped 
his hand as we were leaving one of these smit- 
ten homes : " Oh ! Dr. N , what would we 

have done in this time of trouble without your 
counsels and prayers!" 

Through God's special mercy, but few fatal 
cases of sickness have occurred among our com- 
municants. One of these had in it something 
of the features of a dreary romance, or showed 
the ruthlessness with which death overrides 
the tenderest attachments which bind us to life. 
A young man, a mechanic, who had come from 
the West a year or more ago, had presented 
his letter of dismission from a church in his 



88 EXTKACTS FROM AN ELDER'S DlARY. 

former place of residence to our session, and 
had been admitted to our communion. His 
unvarying strictness in observing bis religious 
duties, and bis fidelity to all his business obli- 
gations, soon gained him the respect and pa- 
tronage of the community. Under these en- 
couraging auspices, he ventured, last summer, 
to bring to a neat little home, which he had 
purchased and furnished, a fair young bride, 
exuberant in health and beauty as a prairie 
rose. It was a pleasure, which I frequently en- 
joyed, to drop in and witness their happiness. 
When the fever broke out, I begged him to 
seek some retreat for himself and his wife in 
the country. He was well, temperate, and oc- 
cupied with his trade, and his mind could not 
take in the thought of danger. I repeated my 
advice the last time I met him on the street. 
Then he argued that it was too late ; that, even 
if he desired to leave, he must have imbibed 
the infection. It was, indeed, too late. The 
next day I learned that both he and his wife 
were stricken violently with the disease. I 
hurried to the house, where kind friends had 
already preceded me, and found him in one 
room and his wife in an adjoining one, both in 
a state of delirium — a dull stupor in his case, 
and a wild rambling of mind in hers. The 



A Pestilence. 



89 



eclipse which had fallen on his soul was never 
lifted. Her ceaseless, but irrational, activity 
wrought like an effervescing fountain. One 
sentiment seemed to hold its ground amidst all 
her confusion, and that was gratitude for a 
little bunch of flowers which I had brought 
her on one of my visits. She kept them per- 
petually in sight, talked fondly of them and to 
them till speech failed her; arid when she died, 
a gentle hand laid the faded emblem of herself 
on her bosom. The end came to them both on 
the morning of the fourth day, with the differ- 
ence of only a few hours in time ; and in the 
shadow of the evening we bore their coffins to 
the cemetery in the same hearse, and laid them 
side by side in the same grave. It was the 
saddest of all the sad incidents I have been 
called to witness, and an illustration of the in- 
stability of human hopes and plans which I 
shall never forget. We gaze at such anomalies 
.as the Israelites did at the cloud and flame 
which enveloped the crest of Sinai; and the 
only solution of the dread phenomenon is to be 
found in the revelation of the sovereign law, 
the holy will of the Lord God, which faith 
discerns through the thunder's voice and the 
lightning's blaze. 

Alongside of this picture is another which is 



90 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



traced indelibly upon my memory. A young 
stranger from an eastern State had been ap- 
pointed by the authorities in charge of our 
municipal affairs the principal of our public 
school. The appointment was offensive to our 
people, and the new officer made no friends. 
Ultimately the fever seized him. Instantly a 
tide of sympathy turned to him, and prejudices 
disappeared in the face of the sufferer's lone- 
liness and helplessness. No effort was spared 
by men or women to promote his comfort and 
save his life. I went to his lodgings promptly, 
and telling him who I was, offered him my per- 
sonal services, and assured him of the kindly 
interest felt in his case by the community. He 
was touched, and became confidential. He 
told me, among other things, that he was a 
member of the Presbyterian Church at his 
home, and had brought his certificate with 
him, but had been deterred from presenting it 
to the church by discovering the adverse feel- 
ing entertained towards him by the community. 
He was a recent graduate of a New England 
college, anxious to teach before studying a 
profession, and had accepted the appointment 
offered to him in entire ignorance of the objec- 
tionable circumstances under which it had been 
made. His family had consented to his leav- 



A Pestilence. 



91 



ing them in the belief that the opening pre- 
sented to him was a particularly desirable one. 

"Oh," I could not but exclaim, "if you had 
only gone, as you might have done, to our 
pastor, and told him all these facts, how 
much injustice and suffering might have been 
avoided!" I added, " Everybody is your 
friend, now. We will do all that human skill 

and attention can do for you, and Dr. N 

will call to see you, and the prayers of God's 
people will go up for you." I encouraged him 
with these and other words. 

His attack was a violent one, but his frame 
was strong, and for a day or two we hoped to 
see him rally. But the brain began to show 
signs of giving way, and hope left us. It was 
devolved upon me to reveal to him his con- 
dition. I did so as carefully and tenderly as 
I could. He looked at me with an expression 
of amazement and agony on his countenance 
which was unutterably pathetic. 

"Oh, God," he exclaimed, "has it come to 
this? Was it for this I left my home?'" and 
burying his face in his pillow, he wept and 
groaned himself into comparative composure. 
After a while he turned to me again, and said, 
"Let me speak to you while I can. You will 
find paper and pencil there," pointing to a 



92 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



table; "take down what I have to say." He 
gave me the address of his father, and directed 
me to convey to him numerous messages ; " and 
tell him — tell him," he added, in broken utter- 
ances, "Oh, yes, merciful Saviour, may I not 
tell him — that I died — a Christian ? " 

He paused a while and then said, "I have 
one request more. I am engaged to be mar- 
ried. Write to Miss — , at fee- 
ing me a lady's address), "and tell her that I 
have loved her to the last, and I think God will 
let me love her still in heaven. And please 
put this in your letter," he continued, as he 
drew a ring from his finger. " She will know 
it, and know what it means!" He was ex- 
hausted. I spoke some soothing words, offered 
up a brief prayer at his bedside, and left him. 

I never saw him again. He soon became 
delirious — frantic, even, and died before the 
next morning. An unusually large company 
attended his burial, and women's gentle hands 
strewed flowers over the stranger's grave. Death 
called into exercise a charity which, under the 
mistakes and passions of life, had failed to 
assert itself. Perhaps there would not be so 
many sorrows in the world if they were not 
necessary to keep the fire of humanity burning 
in human breasts. 



A Pestilence. 



93 



Oh, God, how unsearchable are thy judg- 
ments, and thy ways past finding out ! Surely, 
it must be that the fascinations of a world 
which have grown too attractive to me may be 
broken that I have been called to pass through 
such scenes! 



EXTRACT XIV. 



THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 

June 2, 1880,— Last month it was my privi- 
lege to be present as a commissioner of our 
presbytery at the General Assembly, which met 

at . I had been fairly educated for this 

office by my frequent attendance upon the 
meetings of presbytery and synod, but have 
heretofore declined an appointment to this 
more august body, partly from a diffidence as 
to my fitness to do service to the church, but 
mainly because I" could not venture to ask so 
extended a release from my secular engage- 
ments as an attendance upon a General Assem- 
bly would demand. This year, as I could 
consistently command time, I allowed myself 
to be elected, and was able to fill my seat from 
the beginning to the close of the sessions of the 
body. >.% 

I confess that it was with a very distinct 
sense of awe that I found myself associated 
with this supreme court of the Presbyterian 
Church. The term "venerable," so often ap- 
plied to it in the way of courtesy, was to me 
more than a title ; it was a fact. Believing, as 
94 



The General Assembly. 95 



I did, that the idea of the church given in the 
Bible was correctly embodied in the Presby- 
terian system, and recognizing the members of 
this convention as a body charged by the head 
of the church with the ministerial oversight of 
its affairs, I had been accustomed to invest it 
with the highest attributes with which a mere 
human congress could be endowed. I took my 
seat in this meeting, therefore, with, perhaps, 
an extravagant expectation as to the exhibition 
of dignity, intellectual ability, wisdom and spir- 
itual-mindedness which I was to witness in the 
proceedings with which, for a series of days, 
we were to be occupied. These expectations, 
I am pleased to say, have been to a large 
extent, gratified. I am impressed more pro- 
foundly than I have ever been, with the con- 
viction that our church is loyal to the principles 
upon which Christ has founded his visible king- 
dom, that it has realized the right conception 
of its structure and mission, and that it has 
been eminently wise in the methods adopted 
for the execution of its great vocation. If I 
loved and honored it before, I love and honor 
it more now, for the confidence I have in it, as 
true in its adherence to the immutable truths 
of the everlasting gospel, on the one hand, and 
singularly adapted, in its working, to the needs 



96 EXTKACTS FROM AN ELDER'S DlARY. 



and conditions of the world which it is to con- 
vert, on the other. I record it as one of the 
great privileges of my life that I have been 
permitted to attend this Assembly. I wish to 
record, now, some of the reflections which 
have taken shape in my mind, in connection 
with this pleasant interlude in my experience, 
before they have lost their freshness. 

First, In so large a body I missed the close- 
ness of intercourse, and the warmth of fraternal 
sympathy with which I had become familiar at 
the meetings of presbytery and synod. Still, 
there was a compensation for this loss in the 
opportunity of seeing the faces and hearing 
the voices of many with whose names I had 
long been acquainted, and whose eminence as 
standard-bearers in the Lord's host had drawn 
to them the respect and pride which, as a 
humble member of the same spiritual house- 
hold, I had been wont to entertain towards 
these illustrious kinsmen. I have added to 
the range of my enjoyments in time to come, I 
am sure, by this enlargement of relationship 
and affection. It was a thought, too, which 
often came to me with an inspiring effect, that 
here, in this company, consisting, for the most 
part, of men of marked individuality, and rep- 
resenting the diverse mental phases due to 



The General Assembly. 97 



sectional environment, and different social and 
literary training, and who were, yet, all welded 
together in the closest concord by the inspira- 
tion of a common faith in the word of God and 
a common zeal for the cause of Christ, I was 
beholding the blessed spectacle of a corpora- 
tion like that which the apostle describes in 
his Epistle to the Ephesians, as "a building 
fitly framed together" and constituting by the 
unity of its members "a habitation of God 
through the Spirit." Separate waves they 
seemed, each possessing its own vitality and 
maintaining its own independence, and yet 
moving under the same impulse, and blending 
in a grand harmony like that of the sea. And 
as I never look at the sea without feeling that 
the pulse of God's power is throbbing in its 
flow, so, in this spectacle, I could not but feel 
that this confluence of soul was due to the 
power of God's grace. 

There is something, also, of which I am con- 
scious, which I may call the quickening and 
widening of my individual spiritual life through 
association with the corporate life of the 
church, which this protracted communion with 
so large a body of brethren has awakened in 
me. Personally, perhaps, I have an increased 
sense of my own insignificance by having had 
7 



98 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 

to exchange the standards of my own little 
home-sphere for those with which I have been 
brought in contact during this meeting; but I 
feel that I am a bigger and a stronger man in 
faith and in purpose, through the wider horizon 
which I have been surveying and the stimu- 
lating atmosphere I have been inhaling. Yes, 
I am thankful I went to this Assembly, though 
I went supposing I was a cipher, and have re- 
turned knowing that I am one. 

Second, I had no light to throw upon the 
deliberations of the body through the medium 
of public address, but I could, and I did, take 
part in the business by participating in the 
consultations of several committees of which I 
was appointed a member. In this capacity I 
tried to do my best. I soon discovered that a 
commissioner to the General Assembly was not 
sent on a holiday excursion. The call for work 
was incessant, and often interfered with private 
convenience and bodily comfort. The efficiency 
of an Assembly in doing business well and 
promptly lies, I am persuaded, very largely, in 
the competency and fidelity of its committees. 
In the rural district where I was born, there 
were occasional gatherings of the people of the 
neighborhood at what were called "raisings." 
A house was to be built. The material for the 



The General Assembly. 



99 



frame-work of the structure had all been pre- 
pared, piece by piece, in the seclusion of the 
workshop or shed, by the mechanics. When all 
was elaborated, to the shaping of the minutest 
pin or brace, the male portion of the community 
were invited to come and assist in the process 
of laying, elevating, and jointing the various 
parts of the building. It was simply a public 
agency giving effect to a project in which every 
element had been provided by skilled hands 
in private. This now obsolete custom, it seems 
to me upon a review of what I witnessed, might 
be imitated to advantage by a large ecclesi- 
astical body. Let the work of hewing, planing, 
and chiselling be done in the committee room, 
and let the Assembly attend to the raising. 
There used to be, also, a generous feast spread, 
as the sequel to these gatherings. Perhaps, if 
the same plan were adopted, there might be a 
better chance to respond to the hospitable 
importunities which are apt to pursue the at- 
tendants upon our church meetings. 

Third, The extent of the work given to the 
church to do, and the portion of it which it is 
actually doing, grew upon me immensely, as I 
listened to the reports of committees, the ad- 
dresses of speakers — some from mission fields 
at home and abroad — and the sermons which 



100 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



emphasized the claims of Christ and his king- 
dom. The apostolic enthusiasm, at which we 
are accustomed to wonder as an exceptional 
phenomenon, seemed to me sometimes the most 
natural thing in the world, to which the heart 
of the believer in Jesus must open as normally 
as the lungs of a new-born infant do to the 
influx of the air, and the real wonder was, that 
all Christians were not inspired by it. God 
help me, in all time to come, to be more 
affected by this sacred afflatus than I have 
been wont to be ! 

Fourth, There was something unspeakably 
refreshing in the thought which often came to 
me, that I was here consorting, day after day, 
with a company of men who were animated by 
a faith in a spiritual world, and influenced by 
the attractions of spiritual objects. I suppose 
I was particularly susceptible to an impression 
of this kind because my manner of life has kept 
me so constantly under the influence of a secu- 
lar element. Ordinarily, it is with men who 
are absorbed with the desire for wealth, and 
devoted to the pursuit of it, that my position 
requires me to be conversant. As a man of 
business, I must talk business, or hear it talked 
about, from morning till night, until the con- 
sciousness of a spiritual nature in myself or 



The General Assembly. 101 



others is almost expunged from my mind. Oh, 
what a relief it was to find myself in a society 
where the dialect of the market, and the arts 
of the financier, and the infatuation of money- 
getting were unknown ! Not that these men with 
whom I was now fraternizing were ascetics who 
had persuaded themselves that the abandon- 
ment of common sense, and the sacrifice of 
decency and comfort constituted religion, but 
that in their policy the love of the world 
was kept in subordination to aspiration after 
spiritual ends, and things seen and temporal 
were sought and used only as auxiliaries in 
the acquisition of things unseen and eternal. 
On this sordid earth, it was pleasant to find a 
place where earthly lusts did not intrude, where 
the prevailing passion was the love of Christ, 
and truth, and righteousness, and not the crav- 
ing for riches and social or political eminence, 
and over which the presence of the Holy Spirit 
might complacently brood. 

Fifth, I must say it was a matter of un- 
feigned satisfaction to me to notice that the 
eldership, as a part of the constituency of the 
Assembly, were a positive and not merely a 
negative element. They received in a marked 
way the respectful appreciation to which their 
rank as presbyters entitled them. I realized 



102 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



from this fact that the church is a "spiritual 
commonwealth," and not a hierarchy. The 
popular factor in it was more than a shadow 
and an echo. It was not unfrequently a per- 
ceptible force, and a salutary one, in determin- 
ing action. As the real aspect of an object 
may be better ascertained by throwing upon it 
lights drawn from different quarters, so the 
acumen and culture of a mind expert in secular 
problems may be advantageously combined with 
the skill derived from scholastic research and 
theological training. There were men on the 
floor of this Assembly who could see points 
and bearings in a proposition that had escaped 
the eyes of spectacled divines. I could not, of 
course, pose as one of these, and could only sit 
dumb while the oracles spoke ; but I am sure 
there were some among my brethren in the 
eldership whose clear vision and practical tact 
untied for me many a knot in which my mind 
was entangled, and through their gifts and 
efforts I felt that the office they held was 
abundantly magnified. 

Sixth, The optimistic view I have been ex- 
pressing must be toned down a little by two 
other reflections which I have brought back 
from this meeting. One is, that the idea of a 
" dead line," marking the exitus of efficiency in 



The Genekal Assembly. 103 



the life of ministers, which I hear of occasion- 
ally as floating about in the religious commu- 
nity, seems to have insinuated itself, to some 
extent, into the highest court of our church. It 
seemed to me, on several occasions during the 
sessions of the late Assembly, that the elder 
and more mature men were almost interdicted 
from taking part in the discussions on impor- 
tant subjects by the forwardness of younger 
members. At least, the opportunity to speak 
had to be won by such a struggle, such an out- 
lay of voice, and such alertness of motion in 
catching the moderator's attention, that the 
venerable seers, whose conceptions of decorum, 
probably, had been derived from an earlier age, 
or whose lung-power and physical agility were 
unequal to the contest, preferred to surrender 
their rights and to let the junior prophets take 
the field. Charitably, I hoped that all these 
Eldads and Medads were indeed prophets, and 
that the Lord had put his Spirit upon them; 
but inwardly and emphatically, I said, "Days 
should speak, and multitude of years should 
teach wisdom." 

My other criticism was in the form of a ques- 
tion : Must a man's opinions be so identified 
with his personality, that to dissent from the 
former is to inflict a wrong upon the latter ? It 



104 EXTEACTS FROM AN ELDER'S DlARY. 

seemed to me' that some of the speakers took 
the affirmative view of this question. Perhaps 
people generally do. I infer this from the 
exhibitions of temper and the caustic retorts 
which sometimes marred the equanimity of a 
debate. Failure to see the correctness or the 
logical sufficiency of the opinions expressed by 
one member by some other one had the effect 
of a personal affront to the former. Surely, we 
are none of us embodied truth. Surely, " wis- 
dom will not die with us," as Job reminds his 
opponents. In my humble way of thinking, 
the man who cannot bear to have the correct- 
ness of his opinions challenged without feeling 
that he has suffered a personal wrong which 
calls for resentment, has claimed for himself a 
position which lies very near to an assertion of 
infallibility. I am not qualified to philosophize 
upon such a subject, but it does seem to me 
that a man of sound mind will draw a line of 
distinction between himself and his opinions, 
at least so far as to remember that, when he 
gives his opinions to me, he is making them 
mine in such a sense that I can inspect them, 
weigh them in my scales, and form an opinion 
of my own as to their worth ; and, if that opin- 
ion does not accord with his, I am not injuring 
him, for it is his gift to me, not himself, whose 



The General Assembly. 105 



merits I am canvassing. When I have seen the 
fire of passion flushing the cheek and kindling 
the eve of a debater on a church platform, I 
have said, If there is wisdom here, there is cer- 
tainly lacking something which St. James calls 
"the meekness of wisdom." 



EXTRACT XV. 



PASTORAL CHANGES. 

Sunday, October 31, 1880. — To our unspeak- 
able regret, our old pastor, Dr. N , was 

obliged by accumulated infirmities to close his 
ministry among us. For more than twenty-five 
years he had presided over this flock, and his 
path, during that long period, was the progress- 
ive one of "the shining light, that shineth more 
and more unto the perfect day." The spirit of 
the old hero Caleb was in him, but he could 
not say, as that stalwart octogenarian did, at 
the close of his career, "As yet I am as strong 
this day as I was in the day that Moses sent 
me." From the time he assumed the charge of 
this church he made himself one with it, knit- 
ting himself to it as an organic element, and, 
apparently, never entertaining a thought or a 
purpose looking to a change of location. Nor 
had it ever entered into the minds of his people 
to desire a change. A review of his history 
has much to offer in favor of permanency in 
the pastorate; and I am satisfied that the gen- 
eral law of the church should contemplate this 
permanency. But the maintaining of such a 
106 



Pastoral Changes. 107 



permanency assumes that there must be, to a 
considerable extent at least, a permanency or 
stability in a congregation ; and, unfortunately, 
in the present day this , condition is wanting. 
Dr. N , in his latter years, has often re- 
marked to me, sadly: "The world renews its 
youth in each generation that comes upon the 
stage. Man has no such successive births, or 
metamorphoses. He grows only older as the 
decades advance, until some day he awakes to 
the fact that the current life of the world has 
swept beyond him. The place in which he will 
feel himself more sensibly than in all others a 
stranger will be his native town, if he revisits 
it after the lapse of fifty years. He is out of 
date, out of harmony with the tastes, the modes 
of thought, the susceptibilities and capabilities 
of the community around him. I will not allow 
myself to think that it is a new gospel that the 
people want, but they do want, I fear, a new 
way of setting the gospel before them. Even 
familiarity with the look, manner, voice, and 
the mental processes and habits of a preacher 
blunts the edge of his counsels, and benumbs 
the sensibility of both ear and conscience in 
the hearer. I am thankful," he would add, 
"that I have been permitted to hold my ground 
so long in this field; but, in these changeful 



108 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



times, I do not blame the brother who chooses 
to make changes in his." 

One thing I am glad to say in regard to the 
retirement of our late pastor : we gave him 
more than tears at parting; we provided amply 
for his comfortable support during his declin- 
ing years. 

Such an event creates a sort of crisis in the 
history of a church. It was new to us, and the 
session realized the responsibilities which were 
laid upon them under this unusual condition of 
affairs. We recognized the fact that a minister 
is a gift of the Lord ; we advised a devout wait- 
ing for divine direction, and a continual and 
general supplication for divine illumination, in 

the effort to obtain a successor to Dr. N ; 

we determined that the stated worship of God 
and the regular operations of the church should 
be continued without variation. We engaged 
supplies for our pulpit as we could obtain 
them, and, in the absence of these, resolved, 
with such ability as we had, to conduct the 
public services of the Sabbath and of the week. 
"We gave notice that, in the case of deaths in 
the congregation, where it was agreeable to the 
families bereaved, some member of the session 
would be ready to conduct an appropriate ser- 
vice at the burial. We apportioned the terri- 



Pastoral Changes. 



109 



tory of the congregation into convenient dis- 
tricts, and agreed to charge ourselves, sever- 
ally, with the work of family visitation during 
the interregnum in the pastorship. 

Under this arrangement and a tolerably faith- 
ful compliance with it, we have, happily, main- 
tained our ecclesiastical order and activity with- 
out a material jar; and, as a crowning blessing, 
we have been led, as we trust, heartily to agree 

in the calling of a suitable man, the Rev. S 

G W , to become our pastor. This 

call was accepted, and to-day, by a commission 

of the presbytery, Mr. W : — was formally 

installed over the flock. Our dear old pastor 
was present, and in most touching terms made 
the closing prayer, "recommending both pastor 
and people to the grace of God, and his holy 
keeping." 

As the senior member of the session, I do 
here acknowledge, with special gratitude, the 
mercy of God in conducting us safely through 
this transition state, and enabling us, his stew- 
ards, at the close of it, to render up, like Ezra's 
priests, to our new chief, the vessels of the 
Lord's house, without loss and without detri- 
ment. 



EXTRACT XYI. 



TRIBULATION. 

Sunday, February 20, 1881. — I am sitting 
to-night under the shadow of a great affliction. 
I am tasting a sorrow the bitterness of which, 
in multitudes of other cases, I have been called 
to witness and have tried to soothe, and from 
which, by the singular goodness of God, I have 
heretofore been exempt. Yesterday I laid in 
her grave my youngest child, the sweetest, 
brightest, most precious link, as it seemed to 
us, in the chain of our family life and love. 
She had come, like the evening star, to gild 
our sunset sky, and make luminous the scenes 
from which the radiance of the daylight had 
largely faded. We had often thought, with 
palpitating hearts, of the pain we should ex- 
perience at leaving her; we had never, till 
recently, anticipated the anguish involved in 
her leaving us. The silence of the house, 
which every one seems afraid to break; the 
dreary vacancy, in which every token and 
charm of home life seems to have been swal- 
lowed up ; this mockery of occupation, in which 
we seem to be moving about like spectres ; this 
110 



Tribulation. 



Ill 



reserve, which keeps us from looking in one 
another's faces, lest our look should become 
tears, and from speaking to one another, lest 
our speech should end in a sob; this stifling- 
sense of falseness, of unreality in everything 
about us; oh, this living deadness, which has 
enveloped us all, is teaching us what the death 
of the darling of the household means. God 
help us to learn what it means as a part of the 
discipline he applies to his own children ! This 
"strange thing," as it appears to the eye of 
nature, must not be thought a strange thing 
when surveyed in the light of faith. I must 
escape from this dark spell of grief. It may 
beguile me into a presumptuous questioning of 
the ways of God. I must practice the trust 
and submission I have tried to encourage 
others, under similar circumstances, to exer- 
cise. Perhaps it was to enable me to do this 
service more effectually that I have been put 
through this trying ordeal. If I am a branch 
of Christ, the "true vine," the purpose of my 
being such is that I may bear fruit to the 
Husbandman's glory. I must accept purging 
or pruning as a part of my culture ; and the 
wise Husbandman cannot err in the form in 
which he applies it. He who maketh sore 
can bind up. He has not left me without 



112 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 

abundant consolation in my present distress. 
Blessed be his name ; if I have one child less 
on earth, he has one more in heaven ! 

My daughter had reached her sixteenth year. 
She was, literally, full of life; full to the sym- 
metrical completion of her own person, and 
full in the overflowing sympathy, kindness, and 
geniality with which she affiliated with every 
other being. Her natural cheerfulness threw a 
sparkle over the surface 01 her life like the phos- 
phorescence on the wave, but beneath there 
were depths of thought and feeling which she 
seemed instinctively to shrink from revealing. 
On this account, while there was evidence that 
she was living under the influence of genuine 
religious conviction and principle, she main- 
tained a persistent silence on the subject of her 
personal spiritual experience, and had, invaria- 
bly, a refusal to make to the suggestion I often 
presented to her in recent years, that it was her 
duty to profess openly her faith as a Christian. 
I was satisfied that it was the intense awe with 
which her view of the truths of religion affected 
her that caused her diffidence ; and waited for 
the time when the seal should be broken and 
her tongue should utter the confiding words, 
"My Lord and my God." The time came, but 
in a way that I had not anticipated. 



Tribulation. 



113 



Early in the spring, while on a visit to the 
country, she contracted a severe cold, which 
developed rapidly into lung-disease. The sum- 
mer was devoted to fruitless efforts for her 
restoration, and ended in the abandonment of 
hope, in all except herself. From the moun- 
tains, whither we had carried her, we brought 
our patient sufferer home to die. As often as 
her strength permitted I bore her in my arms, 
as I would an infant, from her dreary sick-room 
to an easy chair in our library, from the window 
of which she could look out upon the street and 
draw, at least, the semblance of diversion from 
the sights which were passing before her. 

One morning in December, after she had 
been exhausted by an unusually harassing fit 
of coughing, she had desired to be borne to 
her customary seat, and I had gently placed 
her there. We were alone. After resting a 
few moments, she gazed at me with an intense 
earnestness, and said, "Pa! I don't think I 
shall ever be well." 

The terrible secret which had been long dis- 
closed to us, her friends, and which had been 
half-suspected, but never uttered by herself 
before, was now divulged. I had been waiting 
anxiously for such a revelation. It was time 
the truth should be recognized by her. With 
8 



114 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 

such composure as I could command, I replied, 
"My child, I do not think you ever will be." 

She burst into tears, and exclaimed, " Oh, it 
is so awful to die and go alone, all alone, to 
meet God!" 

There was a pleading look in her eye as she 
gazed at me, which seemed to me like the soul 
stretching out its hands to me for succor. It 
seemed to say to me, "If you could go with 
me I would not be afraid to die"; and my 
heart was responding, "If such a thing could 
be, I would be glad to go with you." 

But we both felt the mysterious bar that 
separated us here. She had crossed a circle 
over which I could not pass, within which my 
arm could no longer sustain her. I could only 
say to her, "Mary, don't you know God well 
enough not to be afraid to be alone with him? 
He has been with you all your days. His pre- 
sence has been full of tenderness, kindness, 
mercy and grace towards you. My love to you 
has been but a faint reflection of his love to 
you. Does he not say in the Bible, 'As one 
whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort 
you ' ? Cannot you trust yourself with him as 
confidently as you have been wont to trust your- 
self to the care of us, your earthly parents ? " 

And then I spoke to hor of God as revealed 



Tribulation. 



115 



to us in Jesus Christ. I showed her how that 
awful "glory," the first thought of which had 
appalled her, had been converted into the soft 
radiance of love as it beamed from the face of 
her Saviour. 

"Nothing but sin and a refusal to accept 
Christ as a deliverer from its guilt and power," 
I told her, " could properly make us afraid of 
God. What Christ is, God is, to the soul that 
believes in Christ. Just think of God as Jesus 
manifests him to you, yearning for his lost chil- 
dren, providing for their recovery, welcoming 
them on their return, and ask yourself, ' Ought 
I to be afraid of such a God, even though I 
must meet him all alone?' " 

I talked long in this strain, and an under- 
current of prayer was going along with all that 
I said. 

She listened silently, till I asked, "Mary, do 
you not believe in Jesus? Do you not love 
him?" 

Then, with a gleam lighting up the languid 
eye, she answered, "I do ; I know I do " ; and 
calmly added, "Pa, I had forgotten Jesus. I 
am not alone ; I am not afraid to die ! " 

The mist had vanished from the dark valley. 
She never, from that moment, wavered in her 
trust. She said but little of her feelings, but 



116 EXTRACTS FROM AN ELDER'S DlARY. 

showed by her cheerful endurance of her suf- 
ferings, and by the serenity which rested, like 
the sobered light of the setting sun, upon her 
countenance, that the "peace of God was keep- 
ing her heart and mind through Christ Jesus." 

Once again, while sitting in her easy chair, 
alone with me, she said, in a deliberate way: 
"Pa, I have been thinking about my dying so 
young, and I am sure God knows what is best 
for me. I am too weak to meet the dangers to 
which I might be exposed in the world. It is 
better that I should go now." 

A few mornings before her departure, after 
a night in which she had had little rest, lifting 
her emaciated arm from her bed, she cried out, 
"This poor arm! this poor arm! it is so tired!" 

" My darling," I said, " soon you will be where 
the inhabitant shall no more say, 'I am sick,' 
and where the weary shall be at rest. Isn't the 
prospect pleasant ? " 

"Oh! delightful! delightful!" she answered,, 
with rapture in her tone; and in a day or two 
more she left us, and went, all alone, to be with 
God. 

That vivid phrase, "alone with God," the 
cry of a startled soul, has been ringing in my 
ears ever since I heard it, and I think will live 
in my memory to my dying day. It shall re- 



Tribulation. 



117 



mind me of the awful presence which is always 
with me, and with me in such an intimate and 
transcendent sense as makes all other presences 
insignificant. I will try to find in the thought 
of this presence an intimation of the solemn 
import of death. It is the soul divorced from 
every other object in the universe to stand 
"alone with God." All that made up the 
familiar environment of life retires as man 
steps upon that unfamiliar territory claimed 
by death. The foot of friendship, of parental 
love, is arrested at its border. The sceptre 
and the hand that wielded it part company 
there. The conjugal bond which made of 
twain one is sundered there, and the " one " 
is riven into the "twain" again. The terms 
"property" and "owner" lose their signifi- 
cance there, and all to which the dying man 
gave the title "mine" floats from his grasp 
into that of another. Every attachment, every 
interest which made him a part of this world, 
relaxes its hold. Visibly to the observers, as 
the ship loosed from its moorings drifts out 
into the shoreless sea, he is borne farther and 
farther from the reach and sight of all human 
associations, and in the great expanse into which 
he is gliding the mind recognizes nothing but 
God. The blank caused by the dissolution of 



118 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 

all earthly alliances brings out with a distinct- 
ness which every one feels the one indissoluble 
alliance which binds the creature to the Crea- 
tor. Death is the dying of everything else to 
man but God ; for he survives when everything 
else perishes. 

The overwhelming force of this thought of 
the loneliness of the meeting of the departing 
soul with God was never so impressed upon 
my mind as by the pathetic utterance of my 
child. Such a presence, so dreadfully majestic; 
such holiness, so infinitely opposed to all human 
infirmity and sin ; such knowledge, from which 
no fault can be concealed; such power, before 
which mortal prowess can no more brace itself 
than the leaf can against the hurricane — who 
can anticipate a meeting with all this without 
a sinking heart? 

And then, let me remember, that what is true 
of the moment of dying is true of all life. In 
the loneliness of death we are only discovering 
by a change in our point of view what has 
always existed. For are we not "all alone 
with God," in our several relationship and re- 
sponsibility, at every step in our course, as 
truly as we are at the last? Is lie not the one 
being with whom, beyond all other commun- 
ings and transactings, we "have to do"? 



Tribulation. 



119 



"Whither shall I flee from thy presence?" 
asks the Psalmist. God so encompassing man 
necessarily makes a solitude around him ; that 
is, he so fills the sphere occupied by his 
presence that nothing else can, or dare, appear 
within it. When he speaks, the earth is com- 
manded to keep silence. Before him no other 
god is to live. No object can divide man's 
trust, or love, or homage, or worship, with 
God. There is always, amidst the countless 
associations of life, an innermost circle, closer 
to the individual than any other by which he 
is united to the world, in which God is speak- 
ing, and in which he reveals himself to sight. 
And there no other being can be seen, no 
other voice can be heard. It is the infinite 
unit clasping the finite unit, a Horeb spot 
where the Lord meets Moses " all alone." The 
fellowships of earth may blind the eyes of men 
to this fact. They may divert their minds 
from it till the solitude of the death-bed forces 
it upon their gaze. But they do not reverse 
the fact. It is still true, that living as well as 
dying, we are "all alone with God." 

Thank God such tremendous thoughts do 
not exhaust the meaning of the phrase. There 
is a sense in which solitary association with 
God becomes a precious solace for the loss 



120 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



and pain involved in the desolating experi- 
ences to which life is subject. If God is pro- 
pitiated towards us, and we can rejoice in the 
adoption of his sons, what happier condition 
can be conceived of than to be "all alone" 
with him? He is the all-sufficient one; and 
with him, sharing his all-sufficiency with us, 
what good can we want, what evil can we 
fear? Surely it is the climax of bliss to be all 
alone with those whom love has made one with 
us. We realize then, in all its sweetness, the 
fact that they are ours, and we are theirs. 
The Christian, shorn of his worldly wealth, or 
bereft of the fond companionships which once 
garlanded his home, is still able to feel, in all 
the bitterness of his loneliness, that though the 
vanishing joys of earth have left him alone, 
they have still left him "alone with God." 
Jesus has taught us the blessed secret of so 
living all alone with God that we shall not be 
afraid even to die all alone with him. For he 
is our propitiation, who has changed for us 
"the terror of the Lord " into the rapture 
which can exclaim, "I am persuaded that 
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor princi- 
palities, nor powers, nor things present, nor 
things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any 
other creature, shall be able to separate us 



Tribulation. 



121 



from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus 
our Lord ! " 

My thoughts on this sad night have been 
almost beyond my control. It is not I who 
am speaking, but a dying child addressing a 
smitten father's heart. O merciful God, grant 
that in all time to come the remembrance of 
my lost darling — my evening star which has set 
to us to shine in a purer hemisphere — may lead 
me to live more closely, more truly, " alone 
with thee!" 



EXTEACT XVII. 



SESSIOJV MEETINGS. 

October 10, 1881. — Our new pastor, Rev. Mr. 

W , is very rigid in enforcing upon his 

co-presbyters in the session their obligations 
as rulers in the house of God. He gathers us 
together in monthly meetings, and insists upon 
regularity and punctuality in our attendance. 
The meetings are not a new feature in our prac- 
tice, but the insistance upon fidelity in attending 
them may be called an innovation or, perhaps, 

reformation. Our old pastor, Dr. N , 

was naturally accommodating, and in his latter 
years grew lax in his regimen, so that our ses- 
sional conferences were only occasionally held. 

I, for one, feel that I am experiencing the 

benefit of the new order of things. Mr. W 

finds many matters requiring attention in our 
system of church work. It is like repairing an 
old house. The process is a sort of endless 
chain. Each improvement reveals the necessity 
for another. Our vigilant moderator always 
has a budget, of more or less length, prescrib- 
ing things to be discussed and done, so that 
122 



Session Meetings. 



123 



our meetings are never idle seasons. There 
are very few engagements of a secular kind 
that I do not feel willing to give up in order 
to be present at these monthly assemblies. 

Mr. W 's method is to combine the 

devotional with the practical in the conduct of 
them. We meet as an official, and not merely 
social body, and, of course, open and close with 
prayer. Between these prescribed exercises, 
when some perplexing subject is under discus- 
sion, or the serious course our thoughts and 
utterances have taken warrant it, he calls upon 
some member to offer prayer, as a plea for 
guidance, or an expression of feeling. This 
plan, I fancy, keeps us more sensibly under 
the conviction that the presence of the Holy 
Spirit, which we formally ask for at the outset, 
is a blessing actually vouchsafed to us. Our 
regular order is — 

First, To dispatch matters of business, which 
are strictly pursued, and, if piacticable, brought 
to a conclusion. Here our shrewd president 
holds the scales firmly in his hands, and sees 
to it that no irrelevant weights are thrown into 
them. I have begun to suspect that a Presby- 
terian tongue, under the excitement of a debate, 
needs, like the ship, when " driven by fierce 
winds," to be " turned about with a very small 



124 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



helm withersoever the governor listeth." I 
have amused myself sometimes in thinking I 
could see the peculiarities of the original disci- 
ples reproduced, in a small way, in our little 
circle. To-night we had under consultation 
the starting of a new mission in a destitute 
part of our city. The pastor was interested in 
it, and was pleading earnestly for an effort on 
the part of our church to supply this spiritually 
famishing multitude with bread. There was 
Thomas, listening incredulously, and respond- 
ing promptly, "Why, Mr. W , I could as 

soon believe that we are able to raise the dead 
as to christianize this people." There was 
practical and cautious Philip suggesting, " Two 
hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient 
for them, that every one of them may take a 
little." ' There was Andrew, with sympathy in 
his tone, saying, "I know where I can lay my 
hand on five barley-loaves and two small fishes. 
But what are they among so many?" There 
was his brother, Peter, ready to plunge head- 
long into the enterprise, regardless of all diffi- 
culties and risks, because, he said, "he heard 
his Master speaking to him out of the dark and 
bidding him come." There was John, with a 
glow upon his face, remonstrating tenderly, 
" Beloved, if God so loved us we ought also to 



Session Meetings. 



125 



love one another." There was rugged James, 
hurling out his impatience in the question, "If a 
brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily 
food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in 
peace, be ye warmed and filled ; notwithstand- 
ing ye give them not those things which are 
needful to the body; what doth it profit?" 
There was Matthew, the financier, saying no- 
thing, but busy calculating in his mind the 
incomes of various church members and trying 
to apportion a tax upon each, which might 
furnish the means required to begin the mis- 
sion. Others sat silent, staggered by the evi- 
dent importance of the scheme, on the one 
hand, and by the apparent impracticableness of 
it on the other. 

Mr. W waited till this explosion had 

exhausted itself, and then quietly remarked, 
"Brethren, we have forgotten the resources 
which lie in the hands of him who has said to 
us, 'Give ye them to eat.' Let us pray over 
the matter, and take it up again at our next 
meeting." 

Such diversities do not impair the harmony 
of our intercourse. They impart a sort of 
vivacity to what is often very prosaic work. 
They probably make more manifest the spirit 
of concord which really lies behind them ; and 



126 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



they certainly show that charitable friction may 
be the means of evolving light. 

Second, in order, comes what I may call a 
free conversation on the state of religion in our 
church. We are, each one, expected to give 
our impressions of things favorable or un- 
favorable in this condition, to answer the 
question from our different points of view, 
"Watchman, what of the night?" to suggest 
methods for fostering the good seed and eradi- 
cating the tares which the enemy may have 
been sowing, and, generally, to get such an 
intelligent conception of the state of our field 
as may enable us to understand the work which 
is given us to do. 

Third, if time allows, we engage in w T hat I 
Relieve is called now-a-days a symposium, in 
which doctrinal subjects, the action of church 
courts, the phases of the religious world, ques- 
tions of ecclesiastical policy, the significance 
of the signs of the times from the pretentious 
"higher criticism" down to the right of women 
to play pastor and evangelist, and of children 
to lead the crusade of the church against an 
unbelieving world — all are discussed with re- 
sults which are often positively edifying, and 
sometimes possibly mystifying. 

One thing I may say gratefully, that at these 



Session Meetings. 



127 



conferences, while we are not expected to ex- 
pose our particular "personal experiences," we 
are often led to form a better estimate of what 
our experiences, as spiritual men and office- 
bearers in the church of Christ, ought to be ; 
and I am satisfied that if the elders of a church, 
in some such way, " spake often one to 
another," they would find that the Lord had 
heard them and graciously blessed their com- 
munings. 



EXTKACT XVIII. 



SOCIABILITY. 

November 9, 1881. — I am obliged, often, now- 
a-days, to admit that the physical frame fails to 
give support to the behests of the will, and the 
cravings of the heart, as it has been wont to do 
in past years. I detect this enfeeblement in 
many directions. I am made aware of it, per- 
haps, most painfully, in the dimness which has 
fallen upon my eyesight, by which the discrimi- 
native power of the organ has been impaired. 
A confused vision makes it difficult for me to 
recognize readily the persons, even friends, 
whom I meet on the street. This disability 
necessarily produces, to some extent, a change 
of manner, which is not always understood by 
those before whom it is exhibited. It includes 
in it an apparent lack of spontaneity, cordiality, 
or warmth, in my address. It means the ab- 
sence of a salutation where one was expected, 
the icy rebuff which chills the kindly glow which 
was warming another heart, the appearance 
of indifference to one's kind, which is resented 
as an offence to itself by a generous nature. It 
is a feature which, I am sure, is foreign to my 
128 



Sociability. 



129 



disposition and habit. It lias thrown an ob- 
struction, which I seriously deplore, in the way 
of my intercourse with my neighbors. I have 
always taken pleasure in the thought that I 
was possessed in a fair degree of the virtue of 
sociability, and that I was endowed with a 
good measure of aptness in expressing it. My 
acquaintance with my townsmen has been 
large, and there have been few among them 
whom I could not approach with an air of 
familiarity and accost in a tone of kindness. 
This general relationship has been a source of 
gratification to me, and I have regarded it as a 
talent which I could use with some effect for 
the credit, and, perhaps, the propagation of 
religion. I have heard it related of an old 
professor in a theological institution, that he 
used to say to his students, "Young gentle- 
men, in doing good, don't be afraid of putting 
too many irons in the fire." This that I am 
referring to may be a small iron, but it may be 
the medium of conveying the heat which shall 
convert ore into gold. 

I am sure that an elder in a church will need 
to have his tools well tempered, and the limbs 
which use them well oiled with this virtue, in 
order to be a cunning workman. I have never 
forgotten a rather brusque salutation I received 
9 



130 EXTEACTS FROM AN ELDER'S DlARY. 



soon after I was ordained from a lawyer of our 
town. " Well," lie said, "I hear they have been 
making an elder of you. I am glad I shall now 
know one of your class of whom I shall not be 
afraid. When I was a little boy, and a Sunday- 
school scholar at that, I once got into a brawl, 
and almost a fight, with a young companion, 
on the square where we had been playing. 

Old Mr. B , an elder in your church, 

who happened to be passing, rushed at us with 
a roar, seized me with one hand and my antag- 
onist with the other, shook us, and ordered us 
off to our homes. The next day my father 
called me into his room, told me that he had 
been informed that I had been disgracing 
myself by fighting on the street, and gave me 
a whipping. From that time my idea of a 
Presbyterian elder has been that of a Khada- 
manthus, with a scowl on his face, a rebuke on 
his tongue, and a lash in his hand. I hope 
you will be a better representative of your 
order." And so I determined to be, and have 
religiously tried to be. 

I have cultivated sociability. It is unfortu - 
nate when it has to be cultivated, and I was 
blessed in having a large stock of it infused 
into my natural disposition. But it can be 
cultivated, and perhaps in every case requires 



Sociability. 



131 



some training and regulating; for if a lack of 
it be a fault, it may run into a fault through 
excess. I think I have known some minis- 
ters who have depreciated the dignity of their 
office, and their personal influence, by an 
undue effort to adapt themselves to every 
social circle into which they might be thrown. 
The proper desire to affiliate with a cheerful 
company may lead a man of lively tempera- 
ment into what the Scripture calls " foolish 
talking and jesting," and into such a free use 
of joke and anecdote as may sink the charac- 
ter of the teacher of religion into that of the 
humorist. Certainly, there is need for study, 
even in the exercise of a gift or virtue which, 
more than all other things, requires to be un- 
studied. The study demanded, I imagine, must 
begin with a man's own heart and conscience, 
with a desire to act "worthy of his vocation" 
as a Christian, and to exhibit at all times that 
sanctified kindness which aims to do a person 
good, while it furnishes him with entertain- 
ment. It would be a happy attainment if we 
could always so conduct our intercourse with 
our fellowmen that it should in every case be 
followed by the remark which we sometimes 
hear, "I always feel better when I have been 
with that man." 



132 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



I have been a long time in the world, and 
my association has been with men all my life; 
and I believe the shrewdest of them will be 
affected materially by the testimony of their 
senses in their estimate of those with whom 
they are dealing. I know it is true, as the 
Bible says, that a man's " words may be softer 
than oil," and yet be as deadly as the "drawn 
swords of an enemy" ; and yet every one knows 
that " words softer than oil" are the genuine 
symbol of kindly dispositions and are so ac- 
cepted everywhere. The inner man, the invisi- 
ble spirit which makes the man, is constantly 
revealing its states and experiences by the 
phases of the outer man. A tear, a smile, a 
frown, a gesture, are exponents to us of great 
commotions in the soul, and are terms used by 
us to describe amplitudes and abysses of feel- 
ing for which we have no other adequate vo- 
cabulary. So, manner, address has its force in 
life, and is not to be overlooked as a part of 
the endowment which the Christian worker 
needs. Sociability, discreetly exercised, will 
be taken as an index of commendable qualities 
within the man, and the absence of it will affix 
a sinister aspect to his character. I have 
found it, if I am not mistaken, a key to the 
confidence and good- will of my • f ellowmen. Tt 



Sociability. 



133 



has gained for me the credit of being essen- 
tially friendly and sympathetic, and on the 
basis of this conviction they have allowed me, 
in many instances, to remind them of their 
faults, and even to urge upon them the claims 
of religion. Men, when their nature is acting 
in a healthy way, love to trust, as the flower 
loves to bask in the rays of the sun ; and to 
trust is to give to a thing the validity of truth, 
and to use it as a true thing. And so, I think, 
when you can get a person to trust you, specifi- 
cally as a Christian man, you have gone a con- 
siderable way in winning him to an assent to 
the truth of the Christian religion. Impres- 
sions, which are sensible, or which are ex- 
cited by outward causes, may penetrate to the 
spiritual region, and awaken convictions and 
affections which are spiritual in their nature. 
I do not know that I should be extravagant if 
I should place a wise practice of sociability 
among the means of grace. And the young- 
are especially susceptible to the influence of an 
exhibition of it. They love to be promptly 
recognized and kindly addressed by older per- 
sons; to be called familiarly by their names; 
to be made to feel that they are of some im- 
portance in the eyes of their seniors ; and they 
are strengthened in their efforts at right-doing, 



134 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



and their struggles against temptation to do 
wrong, by knowing that there are other hearts 
concerned in their triumphs and their defeats. 
A warm grasp of the hand may have the effect 
to withdraw some feeble soul from the pit -fall 
into which it is about to step, and a cordial 
reminder of a Heavenly Father's love may apply 
the check to the prurient appetites of the in- 
cipient prodigal. 

The word " churl " is an odious one, and 
the character which it describes is one which 
assuredly has no affinity with the family of 
God, and is sadly out of place among the 
officers of his house. May the Lord forbid 
that this waning eye-sight, the thought of 
which has led me into this train of reflection, 
should expose me, through any apparent neg- 
lect of courtesy and kindness in my treatment 
of my fellowmen, to the suspicion of belonging 
to the class which it denotes ! 



EXTRACT XIX. 



CHURCH DISCIPLINE. 

May 22, 1882. — At several of our late meet- 
ings of session we have been painfully con- 
fronted with questions touching the exercise of 
discipline in our church. Certain cases of 
irregularity in the walk of some of our mem- 
bers have been brought to our notice, some of 
which we are constrained to believe are true. 
It is not pleasant to deal with these offenders, 
even in the way of rebuke and admonition, 
which we all admit to be proper. For this, we 
have made provision, and have reason to hope 
that, in some cases, our kindly remonstrances 
have been effectual in abating the evil. Others 
seem to some of our number of such a flagrant 
character as to call for judicial action. We 
have stood at the door of this appalling proce- 
dure for months without venturing across the 
threshold. We have sighed over the faults of 
our erring brethren. We have deplored the scan- 
dal inflicted on the church by their malfeasance. 
We have said something ought to be done to 
vindicate the credit of religion and maintain the 
135 



136 EXTKACTS FROM AN ELDER'S DlARY. 



purity of our household life. vYe have heard 
the voice of the great Lawgiver, saying, let 
the man who will not amend his wrong-doing 
upon private intercession, nor upon the judg- 
ment of the church, "be unto thee as a heathen 
man and a publican," and St. Paul saying of 
the unclean man at Corinth, " Put away from 
among yourselves that wicked person." "We 
have studied the fifteen chapters and forty-three 
pages of our Booh of Church Order, prescrib- 
ing the "Bules of Discipline," and our minds 
are staggered at the terrible task that seems to 
be set before us. The sentiments disclosed by 
our discussions have shown a disposition to 
evade, if possible, the stern requirements of 
these rules of discipline. 

At our last meeting, when this subject was 
under consideration, one member remarked, 
" To my mind these rules are bristling all over 
with the terms and technicalities of a criminal 
code. They suggest the methods of a " court 
of assize " rather than those of a council of 
saints. Such words as "indictment," "cita- 
tion," "prosecutor," "accuser and accused," 
"offence," "censure" and "excommunication," 
seem strangely out of place in the law of a spir- 
itual commonwealth; and I confess that only 
some desperate necessity, like that which calls 



Church Discipline. 



137 



ior the use of a surgeon's instrument, could 
reconcile me to the processes they describe." 

Another expressed himself in this wise : " The 
execution of these rules is an impossibility. 
You have no authority by which you can en- 
force them. Your criminals and your witnesses 
will laugh at your citations. You have no state 
now backing up church courts with threats of 
fine and imprisonment. The day when the 
ghostly power of Rome could bring monarchs 
to a bishop's feet is past. The democratic 
spirit of the age is revolting against the claim 
of rulership wherever such revolt is possible. 
The man who has allowed himself to become 
defiled with an 'offence' is not likely to con- 
sent to have his fault publicly exposed ; nor is 
he likely, as it seems to me, to be reformed by 
being so disgraced." 

A third objected to church trials on the 
ground that they almost invariably produce 
discords and resentments by which the whole 
body is injured, and particular members, per- 
haps, fatally damaged; and sustained his ob- 
jection by the householder's answer to his 
servants in the parable of the wheat and the 
tares, that they should refrain from attempting 
to gather out the tares ; but rather should let 
both grow together until harvest, lest in the 



138 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



endeavor to rid the field of the tares they 
should "root up also the wheat with them." 
"It is poor policy," he added, "to blow up 
your house with dynamite in order to purge it 
of the filth that had got lodged in some of its 
closets." 

A fourth was of the opinion that the Saviour 
had given us a clear intimation of a distinction 
between the spirit of his economy and that of 
the Mosaic law, when, in the Gospel of John, 
chapter viii., he said to the adulterous woman, 
who by the latter would have been stoned to 
death, "neither do I condemn thee; go and 
sin no more." 

Still another observed that, to his view, the 
scandal from which it was proposed to relieve 
the church by the prosecution of offenders was 
an imaginary rather than a real object. " For," 
he argued, "if the scandal lies in the detriment 
which is done to the good character of the 
church, it amounts to nothing. Every fair 
man knows that a heresy or an immorality is 
not a normal index of the character of a 
church. The very fact that it is marked as an 
irregular and reprehensible thing shows that 
it is at variance with the recognized character 
of the church and with the nature of religion. 
The presence of a few black sheep in a flock 



Church Discipline. 139 



would not prove that the breed was not specifi- 
cally white; and those who point to an intem- 
perate or dishonest man in a church and cry, 
1 See what these Christians' pretensions amount 
to,' know that they are uttering a fallacy, and 
that these exceptional types are not genuine 
representatives of Christian character. The 
crooked limb is noticed because of its diverse- 
ness from the general symmetry of the tree; 
and further," he added, " I very much suspect 
that the heated tempers, the indiscreet words, 
the collisions of feeling which are apt to be 
engendered by a church trial, may produce 
scandals possibly worse in virulence and more 
lasting in duration than those which the court 
was called to avert." 

Evidently, the drift of opinion at our pro- 
tracted conference was not leading us to any 
practical conclusion. And after each one had 
contributed his share to the fog in which we 
were involved, our clear-headed pastor closed 
the discussion, and gave us a little tangible 
ground to rest our minds upon in a short ad- 
dress. "Brethren," he said, "it has seemed to 
me that the jurisprudence of our church has 
been under trial to-night rather than offenders 
against its morals or its doctrinal standards. 
I wish a judicial system, free from the objec- 



140 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



tions which have fallen like a fusilade from 
your lips, against our present one, could be 
devised. But the law has been made for us, 
as a church, by those who were authorized to 
make it, and we have accepted it. Until it is 
changed by a similar authority, we must abide 
by it, and try to maintain it. There must be a 
law in all organized bodies. It is the principle 
upon which their corporate life depends. Our 
church is right in asserting a power of juris- 
diction as a part of its function. This includes 
in it the right to suppress, as far as it can, 
whatever is fatal to the existence of the church, 
provided the methods are sanctioned by the 
word of God. Extreme discipline may be ad- 
ministered in extreme cases. The exercise of 
it must be justified by an obvious necessity. 
This idea is recognized in our Booh of Order. 
It teaches, just as distinctly, that discipline is 
never to be administered in the spirit of wrath 
or of personal animosity. The motives must 
be fidelity to the church's head, and love for 
the souls of its members. The rules we have 
been commenting upon are really meant, by 
the precision and amplitude with which they 
are stated, to make plain the intricacies of a 
delicate procedure, to avoid embarrassment and 
mistake, and to secure, as far as forethought 



Church Discipline. Ill 



can do it, complete justice to all the parties 
interested. 

" My private desire would incline me, perhaps, 
to simplify methods of adjudication and to dis- 
pense with much of the harsh terminology and 
rigid formality which now give to a church 
court so much the look of a secular criminal 
tribunal. Especially would I like to see these 
family grievances disposed of more strictly 
within the family walls, and the humiliating 
exposures involved in the trial of offenders and 
the infliction of censure eliminated from our 
practice. 

"Happily for us, my brethren, I honestly do 
not see, in any of the cases brought before us, 
that there is a necessity for a resort to the pain- 
ful extremity of a judicial process. We may 
safely wait for a return of a right mind to our 
delinquent brethren. We can yet pursue them 
with our kind expostulations. We can yet 
pray for their recovery from their wanderings. 
In the meantime, there are, possibly, some 
faults of our own, which the consideration of 
our present trouble may properly bring to our 
attention. 

" First of all, let us ask if the lapse of these 
fallen kinsmen might not have been averted if 
we had been vigilant enough in noticing the be- 



142 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 

ginnings of their decline, and prompt enough in 
going to them with our fraternal warnings and 
admonitions. The elders, who are among the 
people, should show their fidelity as watchmen 
by watching closely over the first haltings of 
the weak and tempted disciple, and checking 
his downward way before the momentum has 
become irresistible. 

"And second, may we not learn a lesson as to 
caution in receiving members into the church ? 
I am convinced we are betrayed into an error 
by our zeal to witness numerical accessions 
to the memberhip of our churches. Quality, 
not quantity, is the thing to be looked at mainly 
in gathering materials for the upbuilding of the 
kingdom of God. A spiritual temple grows 
only by the addition of 'lively stones.' 

"Third, Let us remind one another, as we 
separate, of the prophet's counsel, 'If the 
watchman see the sword coming, and blow not 
the trumpet, and the people be not warned; 
if the sword come and take any person from 
among them, he is taken away in his iniquity, 
but his blood will I require at the watchman's 
liand.' " 

"Now, let us pray and be dismissed!" 



EXTRACT XX. 



SOVEREIGN GRACE. 

Sunday, August 10, 1884. — My services have 
been required recently in administering counsel 
in a case of spiritual need, where extreme deli- 
cacy was called for in the method of address,, 
and where the result has been, to all appear- 
ance, signally gratifying. Believing, as all 
Bible Christians must, that there is a birth of 
the Spirit as real as is the birth of nature, 
many of us, probably, are still wont to couple 
with our belief of the fact a conception as to 
what the mode of it ought to be, and to found 
this conception on the precedents which re- 
ligious biographies have presented to us, or on 
conclusions drawn from the so-called laws of 
mind. There is an overlooking here of the 
illimitable scope of the operations of such an 
agent as the Holy Spirit, a fault of which the 
Saviour forewarns us when he draws a parallel 
between these operations and the movements 
of the wind blowing "where it listeth." I have 
received a great enlargement of vision on this 
subject by what I have been called to witness. 
Salvation, in the case of a sinner, is the result 
143 



144 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



of the pure grace of God. It must be so, be- 
cause the sinner is not entitled to it, and God 
is under no obligation to grant it. How many 
precious hopes in regard to the departed are 
born of this doctrine ! The exercises of a 
dying hour are not always illusory. Grace can 
perform its regenerating work whenever and 
wherever God is pleased to bestow his mercy. 
It is the height of presumption for living men 
to hang their hope of salvation upon the oppor- 
tunities of a death-bed, but it would be limit- 
ing the grace of God to deny that even upon 
this extreme field it can achieve its victories 
and win its trophies. 

The case which has awakened these reflec- 
tions was that of a young man who was to-day 
carried to his grave. I was doubly attached to 
him because his father, deceased some years 
ago, was my particular friend, and because I 
had seen his youth spring up into a maturity 
of almost chivalric proportions. In person he 
was well-formed and graceful, with a hand- 
some countenance and a winning address. 
Good social position and adequate means had 
furnished him with refinement and culture. 
With the avidity of an enthusiastic nature, he 
saw and coveted the enchantments which lay 
everywhere within his bright horizon. Every 



Sovereign Grace. 



145 



avenue which stretched before him was begirt 
with flowers, and every flower sparkled with a 
dew-drop. It was the spectacle of a young 
eagle waving his burnished wing in the morn- 
ing sunbeam. In such an element it is not 
strange that serious reflections were banished, 
and the restraints of religion discarded. He 
was gay, worldly-minded, but not vicious. The 
cup of earthly pleasure mantled so brightly in 
his hand that in the rapture with which he 
quaffed its contents he discovered no evil in 
the draught, and felt no need of a higher good. 

No one dreamed that there was an arrow 
making its way unseen through the air towards 
this " shining mark." But it was so. Just as 
he approached the point of manhood, a blight, 
from some subtle source, revealed itself in that 
goodly frame. Organic troubles of a compli- 
cated sort began to make alarming havoc of its 
beauty and its strength. He struggled against 
the mysterious foe, wearied himself in seeking, 
in every quarter, medical aid and in visiting 
health resorts, till heart-sick with prolonged dis- 
appointment, he turned his feet back to the 
seat of home-life and sympathy. All others saw 
that he must die. From his own eye, as is 
common in such cases, the issue was con- 
cealed ; and the rally, the rebound into health, 
10 



146 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



was, almost to the last, the object of his definite 
expectation. 

He desired my visits and I saw him fre- 
quently. I deemed it most proper, in my ear- 
lier interviews with him, not to dissipate his 
hopes of recovery. I preferred to present the 
subject of religion to him as something con- 
nected with life, rather than as a mere antidote 
to death; and it gave me special confidence in 
the genuineness of the convictions and feelings 
afterwards expressed by him that they were 
not forced into existence by the terror of the 
apprehended catastrophe. In my endeavor to 
introduce the subject to him I found, to my 
surprise, that the work, to a great extent, had 
already been done. "My sickness," he said to 
me, "has been sent upon me to make me think 
of God and see the folly of a worldly life." 
And then he added, " There is more than folly 
in such a life — there is sin." 

Conscience, enlightened by early religious 
instruction, or rather, let me say, the Spirit of 
Gocl, had been busy revealing to him his guilti- 
ness under the law of God, and preparing him, 
for a recognition of his need of Christ as a 
Saviour from sin and the appointed way to the 
Father. In that venture of faith by which the 
soul rests upon Christ in these characters, by 



Sovereign Grace. 



147 



a conscious act of appropriating confidence, he 
hesitated for a while, but only for a while. The 
darkness in which, for a time, he groped, yielded 
easily to a presentation of the doctrines and 
promises of the gospel; and gradually, as the 
dawning light, the assurance, "Jesus loves me, 
even me," took possession of his heart. Hence- 
forth, the expectation of a return to the world 
which he still cherished was coupled with the 
desire of consecrating his life to the serving 
and glorifying of his Saviour. 

"You will not be ashamed of Jesus, if God 
spares you to mingle again with your friends ? " 
I asked. 

"No," was his emphatic reply; "I want to 
live that I may testify of him." 

The fatal crisis came sooner, and more 
abruptly, than any one had anticipated. Every 
one about him was startled when the sudden 
premonitions announced its approach. He 
alone was calm. In an instant, without a 
struggle or sign of regret, the hope of life 
which had buoyed him was surrendered. "I 
am dying," he said, "but I am ready — I am 
willing ; " and then added, " send for the 
doctor, that he may relieve me of suffering. 
But Christ is with me, and will bear me to 
the bosom of God." As an aged relative, 



148 EXTRATCS FROM AN ELDER'S DlARY. 



whose deafness prevented him from hearing 
his whispered utterances, approached his bed- 
side, he lifted his arm and pointed upward. 
Fearing that his gesture had not been under- 
stood, he added, "Tell him I am going to 
heaven, redeemed by the blood of Jesus." 

His remaining hours were spent in giving 
expression to his parting wishes and counsels, 
and when all was done he said to a beloved 
friend who was bending over him, "Now, pray 
that God may let me pass away in unconscious- 
ness or sleep ! " And turning his face from the 
weeping throng before him, in a moment he 
lapsed into a repose as gentle as an infant's 
slumber. Whether he was unconscious or 
asleep, no one knew; but all felt, when, a little 
after, the spirit was known to have gone, that 
the pitying Father had heard the cry of his 
child, and sent the dread messenger to do his 
work with a veiled face and a muffled footstep. 

To us who saw this history evolving itself 
in its successive stages, the conclusion was 
irresistible and was spontaneously expressed, 
" This is none other than a literal verification 
of the wonderful declaration, 'As many as re- 
ceived him, to them gave he power to become 
the sons of God, even to them that believe on 
his name ; which were born, not of blood, nor 



Sovereign Grace. 



149 



of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, 
but of God.'" A divine power, prior to, and 
apart from, all human agency, we had not a 
doubt, had wrought at every step in showing 
this soul the path of life. And grace, so great 
and so condescending are the tender mercies 
of our God, had deigned even to cause the 
harsh gate of death to turn on noiseless hinges 
for the exit of this trembling " little one." 

Surely, I may adopt with renewed confidence 
the apostle's creed, "By grace are ye saved, 
through faith ; and that, not of yourselves, it is 
the gift of God." 



EXTRACT XXI. 



SPIRITUAL COMMIT NIC A TI0N8. 

Sunday, March 1, 1885. — We had a sermon 
to-day from our pastor, which has been to me 
unusually rich, both in instruction and in sug- 
gestion. It was from the text, John xiv. 26, 
"But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, 
whom the Father will send in my name, he 
shall teach you all things, and bring all things 
to your remembrance whatsoever I have said 
unto you." It was clear, like the view one gets 
from a mountain top, in the revelation it gave 
us of the field which lay within the limits of 
our vision; at the same time it showed us, in 
the spaces beyond, vast stretches of heights 
and depths, which we could only dimly descry. 
It has brought to my recollection some facts 
which have lately come under my notice, and 
which have led me into a good deal of serious 
reflection, and, perhaps, I might add, specula- 
tion. 

An excellent lady, whom I knew and esteemed 
very highly, both for her personal charms and 
for the ornament of a bright Christian charac- 

150 



Spiritual Communications. 151 

ter, had been prostrated for a long time with a 
pulmonary affection, in a city south of us where 
she resided. Her husband was engaged in mer- 
cantile business, and was required frequently 
in the interests of his house to make excursions 
into the interior of the country. Her decline 
was so gradual that he felt at liberty to con- 
tinue these excursions, notwithstanding her ill- 
ness. During his last absence her symptoms 
had become alarmingly worse, and she had 
gone to her bed, as was supposed, never to 
leave it alive. About the same time intelli- 
gence arrived that Mr. C , the husband, 

had been attacked violently with pneumonia at 
a little railway station where his journey had 
led him, and had been conveyed, in a very 
critical condition, to the residence of some re- 
lations in the vicinity of our city. The news of 

his illness was cautiously revealed to Mrs. . 

She divined at once the import of it, and 
announced her purpose to go to her husband. 
The physician and attendants declared the 
project impossible ; but she confidently affirmed 
that the Lord would give her strength, and 
directed preparations for her journey to be 
made. Supernaturally, as it seemed, strength 
came to her, and she made the journey, partly 
by steamboat and partly by carriage. It was 



152 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



after her arrival that I first visited the afflicted 
pair. 

Mr. C. had been a man of moral habits, but 
so devoted to his secular pursuits that the sub- 
ject of personal religion had never attracted 
his attention. To my surprise, on entering the 
sick-room, I found the wife, emaciated in form 
but full of energy and apparently unconscious 
of her own infirmities, performing, almost solely, 
the office of nurse to her husband. He was 
utterly prostrated, could hardly turn his head, 
and could speak only in broken and whispered 
sentences. Mrs. C. was singularly cheerful in 
her manner, and after telling me of the mar- 
vellous support she had experienced in coming 
to her husband, said, " I knew my place was 
here, and something within told me that God 
would hear my prayer and enable me to come. 
I have a mission, I think, to lead Herbert to 
Christ." 

This introduction made it easy for me to pre- 
sent the subject of religion to the sick man at 
once. I did so, and spoke simply of the needs 
of a sinful soul, of the provision which God 
had made for these needs in the gospel, and of 
the gracious way in which salvation was offered 
to sinners through faith in Christ. He listened 
silently but attentively, and with rather a dis- 



Spiritual Communications. 



153 



tressed look, remarked, " I am too weak to 
think much of these things now, but I will try 
to. I know they are important, and I believe 
they are true." 

I only added, "You have one with you who 
has not only professed religion, but lived it; 
and she can teach it to you better than any one 
else. She has prayers laid up in heaven for 
many years for you, and is waiting to see them 
answered." 

I saw him almost every day for the next two 
weeks, and while receiving no decided expres- 
sion of his faith in Christ, I was sure I saw 
signs of a penitent and believing spirit in him. 
His wife shared with me in this opinion, "but," 
she would exclaim, " I long to see him have 
the comfort of an assured hope of salvation!" 
A night or two before his death, as she told 
me the next morning, after lying quiet for a 
long time, he called her and asked, "Did you 
speak to me ? " 

"No," she said, " I thought you were sleeping." 

" I have not slept — I have not been dream- 
ing," he replied, "but I heard a voice saying 
to me, ' Go in peace, thy sins are forgiven 
thee!' could it have been Jesus?" 

"Yes," she cried, "I am sure it was Jesus 
speaking to your soul." 



154 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 

"And then," he continued, "I heard songs 
away up in the sky, giving God glory for a 
sinner who had repented. Could this have 
been the angels rejoicing over me?" 

"Oh, yes," she replied, "and your wife re- 
joices with them." 

His face was placid as I approached him, and 
stretching out his hand to me he said, feebly 
but distinctly, " I have given myself to Jesus, 
and he has saved me ! " And there was another 
one added to the rejoicing throng. I felt in 
that chamber that I was standing " quite on 
the verge of heaven." His peaceful frame con- 
tinued till he passed away; and his faithful 
wife, having seen her mission accomplished, 
and his body laid in the grave, returned to her 
home, and, I have learned, speedily relapsed 
into her former diseased condition, and fol- 
lowed her husband to the home of Jesus and 
the angels. 

Was this a freak of delirium, or the halluci- 
nation of a fevered brain? There was no 
evidence of an abnormal condition of mind, but, 
on the contrary, every appearance of sobriety. 
He was not constitutionally imaginative. He 
had been remarkably calm throughout his sick- 
ness. He made no allusion to his revelations 
in talking with me, and clearly showed no dis- 



Spiritual Communications. 155 



position to parade them. I have no philosophy 
to apply to the facts ; but in my simple way of 
thinking, I am more than willing to believe 
that, on that border territory that lies between 
the earthly and the spiritual spheres, there may 
be such an overlapping of the two, that com- 
munications from the spiritual side may be 
given, and a capacity to receive them devel- 
oped, on the earthly side, by means of which, 
things which the natural eye cannot see, and 
the natural ear cannot hear, may be revealed 
to a soul withdrawn, for the most part, from 
the conditions of the earthly sphere and enter- 
ing upon those of the spiritual one. 

In my reading I have met with the phrase, 
"the sub-conscious states of mind." The truth 
conveyed by the phrase, if there be a truth in 
it, lies so far beyond and above my plane of 
thinking, that I am afraid to say that I have 
a definite conception of it. I fancy that it 
assigns to the mind, or the spiritual self, a de- 
partment which is under or deeper than the 
ordinary seat of consciousness. It does not 
yield us the ordinary phenomena of conscious- 
ness, but possesses a capacity to respond to 
forces of an extraordinary sort, and gives us a 
consciousness of things which lie beyond the 
reach of natural apprehension. It is a region 



156 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



of potentialities which may come into acts un- 
der special inspirations. Perhaps I may liken 
it to an instrument of iEolian strings, a hidden 
harp, lying in a chamber of our spiritual na- 
ture, which is silent, unknown, till the breath 
of some extraordinary breeze wakens it into 
sound, voice, or song. Spiritual fingers touch 
these strings, and, lo ! we see visions, and hear 
music, which we never saw or heard before. 
The fact appears, possibly, in regeneration, 
when the new-born soul expresses itself in 
such utterances as these : " One thing I know, 
that whereas I was blind, now I see " ; and 
" old things are passed away; behold, all things 
are become new." 

Now, may not the spirit, just hovering on the 
confines of heaven, get communications of 
heavenly things which transcend any which can 
come to it from the earthly side? Through 
this mysterious sub-consciousness, may not 
Jesus speak to his departing follower, and the 
angels' minstrelsy float down to his ear? I 
feel afraid to affirm and afraid to deny. But I 
must say, it is infinitely pleasant to me to 
believe that heaven thus stoops down to cheer 
the pilgrim as he enters its radiant atmosphere, 
and that John Bunyan was not wholly dream- 
ing when he made Christian, as he approached 



Spiritual Communications. 



157 



the Celestial City, see "shining ones" sent 
forth to cheer and support him, and hear " all 
the bells of the city ringing " to give him wel- 
come, and the melodious noises of the King's 
trumpeters "making the heavens to echo" with 
their congratulations at his victory. This pic- 
ture may be but the creation of a poet's fancy, 
but I must confess to a wish that it were true ; 
and to a sympathy with Bunyan when he gazes 
enraptured at the glories of his vision and 
wishes that he were "among them." 

By a strange coincidence, I met, a few days 
after the death of Mr. C , a case some- 
what similar here in town. A friend of mine, a 
man of some forty-five years of age, a scholar, 
and a professor in an institution of learning, 
was in the last stage of consumption. He had 
been confined to his room for months, during 
which I often visited him. His tastes were 
refined and his habits correct. He made no 
pretension to religion, in the ordinary sense of 
the word. In a sense of his own, perhaps, he 
called himself a religious man, for his fault 
was self-reliance, or self-conceit. He used the 
phrases, "I think," "I believe," as if his 
opinions and beliefs settled for him the right 
or wrong of any proposition. His mind was 
an active one, and he prided himself on his 



158 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



independent use of it. Respect for social 
opinion led him to be a supporter of Christi- 
anity, and an occasional attendant upon the 
preaching of the gospel. Our pastor was ac- 
customed to say of him, that he always felt, 
when he saw him among his hearers, that he 
came clad in a coat of mail, so compact and pol- 
ished that every arrow he could aim at him 
must glance off without leaving a dint. 

I liked his company, and found his conversa- 
tion, on most subjects, instructive. In my visits 
to him after his confinement to his sick-room, 
I was careful, in my way of expressing myself, 
to assume that the accepted opinions of Pro- 
testant Christians were the truth, and to avoid 
being led into a discussion upon them. He 
was too courteous, generally, to introduce one. 
He expected to get well, for he had reasoned 
himself into the conviction that he ought to be, 
and so must be. As time passed on, there was 
an evident decline in his confidence, and a 
growing seriousness in his view of things. I 
ventured, after one of our interviews, to pro- 
pose prayer, and his reply was, " Do pray for 
me, for I need it." I asked him if he would 

receive a visit from our minister, Mr. W , 

to which he said, "Of course; tell him I shall 
be glad to see him." 



Spiritual Communications. 159 



Mr. W became interested in him ; and 

In his usually discreet way, after he found that 
his presence was agreeable to him, urged upon 
him the claims of personal religion. He frankly 
stated some of the views he had been wont to 

hold upon this subject, to which Mr. W r 

only replied, "Professor, my study and my 
experience, too, have taught me that I am sim- 
ply an empty vessel ; and that God is the foun- 
tain from which I must draw my supplies, if I 
would know the truth. Considering that, from 
the very constitution of my nature, I must have 
the truth in order to be safe in this life, or in 
any other life, I do not count it a strange thing 
that God has furnished me with light in his 
word, and that that word has come to mo 
through the medium of a divine revealer, such 
as Jesus Christ claims to be. I have taken my 
little bucket and gone to the fountain thus 
opened to me, and I am sure that every need 
has been met, every condition of my well-being 
supplied, till the efficiency of the provision, 
consciously revealed to me in daily experience, 
has become to me the best demonstration that 
its contents are, indeed, the water of life." 

The sick man only remarked, "I believe you 
have done wisely. Look at me, a poor dying 
imbecile, with a thousand tormentors preying 



160 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



upon every fibre of my body, and yet unable to 
prevent or arrest one of them! Shall such a 
creature talk of being sufficient unto himself? 
Yes, sir, I congratulate you!" 

"My dear friend, will you not go and do 

likewise?" was Mr. W 's reply, as he 

left him. 

It was not long before the humbled scholar 
confessed the folly and sinfulness of his self- 
idolatry and rejoiced in the revelation of Christ 
his Saviour God, as the fountain whose fulness 
could satisfy his every need. He was at his 
own request baptized, and subsequently, in 
company with a few friends, sealed his faith 
by partaking of the memorial supper of the 
Lord. 

The morning of the day on which he died he 
said to me, " I don't know what to think of it, 
but it has seemed to me that my sainted mother, 
who gave me to God when I was born, and 
never ceased to pray for me, has been with me 
.all night. I knew her, she looked so natural, 
and yet so strangely bright and beautiful. 
Was it an illusion ? It did not seem so to me. 
And the sight of her has made me happier 
than ever and anxious to go to her." 

"Believe it was real, my friend," I replied, 
"if it was an illusion, it was a prophecy. She 



Spiritual Communications. 161 

is waiting for you, and God is telling you that 
you shall be a little child again, by her side, in 
your Father's house ! " 

These incidents, and the long list of similar 
ones in the annals of the saints, have been of 
unspeakable comfort to me, in abridging the 
space between the material and the spiritual 
worlds, and in suggesting, at least, the possi- 
bility of communication between them. And, 
hereafter, when I read or sing Bernard's, the 
monk of Clugny, wonderful hymn — 

" O mother dear, Jerusalem, 

When shall I come to thee ? 
When shall my sorrows have an end? — 

Thy joys, when shall I see ? 
O happy harbor of God's saints! 

O sweet and pleasant soil ! 
In thee no sorrows can be found, 

No grief, no care, no toil," 

I will feel that the dear celestial mother coun- 
try has become more dear to me because I am 
permitted to believe that she sends forth her 
"ministering spirits" to sing her songs to her 
children just falling asleep in Jesus, and allows 
the glorified human mother to come into the 
darkness of the dark valley to welcome a son 
to the realms of the heavenly glory. 



11 



EXTRACT XXII. 



THE EVENTIDE. 

Wednesday, December 24, 1890. — To-day I 
commence my eightieth year. I recognize in 
many of its particulars the correctness of the 
pictorial description of old age in Ecclesiastes, 
chapter xii., especially in regard to the bowing 
of the "strong men," and the darkening of the 
"windows." The limbs have lost their vigor 
and elasticity, and dimness has materially im- 
paired the outlook of the eyes. On account of 
this latter infirmity, I shall have to abandon 
this practice of noting the events which have 
arrested my attention and awakened reflection 
in my humble life, or call in the aid of an 
amanuensis, which, I fancy, would interfere 
with the freedom with which I have been wont 
to indulge in my lucubrations. 

I wish, at least, before I lay down my pen, to 
make one more indorsement of the inspired 
record that "the Lord is good, and his mercy 
endureth forever." He has certainly dealt 
kindly with me, and the blessing which has 
given peculiar value and sweetness to all other 
162 



The Eventide. 



163 



blessings is the knowledge that all my bless- 
ings have come from him. It is religion which 
has made my life a happy one, in the absence 
of most of those adventitious adjuncts upon 
which men commonly depend for such a result. 
I have been under the necessity of constant 
labor; I have been thwarted in many of my 
schemes for bettering my worldly estate; I 
have been constrained often to undergo self- 
denial; I have suffered the fretting anxieties 
of household care, and I have felt in all its 
keenness the anguish of bereavement. Yet I 
have enjoyed the great boon of a definite and 
reputable occupation; I have had almost un- 
interrupted health; I have known the whole- 
some comfort of contentment, if not the luxury 
of gratified ambition ; I have broadened a very 
contracted life by the sympathies with which I 
have entered into the lives of others; I have 
come to see that privations were safeguards 
against the snares of temptation, and afflictions 
the chastenings which have brought me to a 
sense of my faults. Somehow, as I review the 
long pathway I have trodden, and the scenes 
through which it has conducted me, I can see 
how the pillar of fire and cloud, the signal of a 
divine guidance, has been with me at every 
step ; and, in the light of this fact, T am assured 



164 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



that my journey will not fail to reach its pro- 
mised destination, in the rest prepared for the 
people of God. 

He who blessed the house of Obededom, 
because the ark was within it, has blessed 
mine. Harmony, unselfishness, and affection 
have made us, literally, a united family. I 
have had five children. One is not, for God 
chose her to be the first-fruits of the flock in 
heaven. My oldest son is married and living 
near me, and his little ones cluster about me 
as autumnal blossoms sometimes come to deck 
the nakedness of an old tree. The younger is 
a student in college, and my hope is that he 
may be called of God to enter the ministry. 
My eldest daughter is happily married, and 
lives within easy reach of us, at the town of 

P . The last one, who was appropriately 

named "Ruth," is my guardian angel, whose 
devotion to me all her life has been saying, 
"The Lord do so to me, and more also, if 
aught but death part me and thee;" and 
whose persistence in declining all other alli- 
ances has shown her determination to execute 
her vow. Since the death of my wife, six 
years ago, she has presided over my home, 
and done all that filial love was capable of, 
in healing the aching numbness of my dis- 



The Eventide. 



165 



severed life. All my children are communi- 
cants in the church. 

For the last two years I have retired from 
active business, and removed to a modest little 
cottage on the outskirts of our city, where, in a 
quietness which I profoundly enjoy, I await 
the hour when my sun, like the natural orb, 
which I watch so often from my front piazza 
descending to its rest in the western sky, shall 
sink below the earthly horizon. 

The retrospect of my life, in which, like most 
persons in old age, I find myself often engaging, 
leads me to many and varied reflections. One 
is, that my life has been sadly unproductive of 
those fruits of holiness and usefulness by which 
God is glorified by his servants. The things of 
the world which so absorb our vision in our 
earlier years contract their dimensions and 
lose their lustre immensely as the great things 
of eternity loom up before our gaze; and we 
wonder, as we look at them from the stand- 
point of a Christian faith, that we could ever 
allow their attractions to outweigh the claims 
of the kingdom of God to our thought and 
labor. The obligations w T e are under to the 
divine Master, who, though he was rich, for 
our enrichment became poor, seem so immea- 
surable as we think that this enrichment is 



166 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



soon to be revealed to us, that, like the pub- 
lican, we cry, "God be merciful to us sinners"; 
and with an ardor in our trust, simpler and 
stronger than that with which we first came to 
Christ, we lay hold of his righteousness and 
hide our deformity under his mantle, graciously 
presented to us in the gospel. We may modify 
our self-reproaches by reminding ourselves that 
our talents have been few, and our sphere of 
influence limited, but the disposition to make 
such excuses will soon vanish before the stern 
conviction that we have fallen short, in many 
ways, of that perfect consecration to Christ 
which he requires, and which he deserves. 

Still, I have comforted myself by reflecting 
that I know that my life as a Christian has 
been under the control of a new law and a new 
principle ; and that amidst all the intrusions of 
the fleshly mind I could say, as Peter did, 
"Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest 
that I love thee." There is a satisfaction in 
the performing of a religious service, which is 
distinct from any which we may derive from 
the thought that we are doing good, or even 
from the thought that we are getting good. It 
is a feeling akin to that pleasant one which we 
derive from any bodily exercise which indicates 
physical health, as the joyous note of the bird 



The Eventide. 



167 



gets its tone from the joyousness of a sound 
organism. The consciousness of being in spir- 
itual health, and anything which confirms this 
consciousness, is grateful to the pious mind. I 
take the things T have done "for Christ's sake" 
as evidence, not that I am personally deserving 
of his favor, but that the Spirit of Christ, in 
some measure, is dwelling in me ; and this will 
sometimes start a song, even in the midst of 
my self-upbraidings. If I am but an earthen 
vessel, and have often shown my earthly ten- 
dencies, I am sure that I am the receptacle of a 
divine element. If it is but a few sheaves that 
I can point to as the result of my gleanings in 
the Master's field, I am sure that it is the 
power of grace which has prompted and en- 
abled me to gather even these scanty treasures. 
And I am sure my Lord will not disown kin- 
ship with one who bears in his soul even so 
faint a reflection of his own image. As I see 
the night in which no man can work darkening 
around me, I prize the recollection of any poor 
labors I have performed for Christ as the truest 
successes of my life ; and I do not believe that 
any Christian, on his death-bed, ever com- 
plained that he had done or suffered too much 
in the service of his Master. 

Another reflection which has been a solace 



168 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



to me is, that there is a potency which we call 
influence with which every man is charged, 
and by which, when under the direction of 
Christian rule and motive, he may be the instru- 
ment in effecting indefinite good. I confess I 
am filled with awe when I open my mind to the 
thought of this invisible power which is ema- 
nating from myself, and from everything in the 
world around me. I am the author of influ- 
ence, and the subject of influence, whether I 
will it or not — whether I know it or not. It is 
like the fluid which pours itself through the 
minute veins in the body of a tree, the effect of 
which appears in the fruit of the olive and the 
vine, or in the poisonous secretions of the upas 
tree. I am not much surprised at the grand 
old illusion of the astrologers, that the planets 
were concerned in shaping the destiny of men 
and nations on the earth, for it was but an 
unscientific application of the truth that influ- 
ence is present and active everywhere. Their 
mistake was in locating in the stars a subtle 
power which really resides in man. 

Where the supreme desire is to make life 
effective in producing ameliorating and benefi- 
cent results, what an incalculable encourage- 
ment for effort and what a boundless field to 
operate upon does this idea furnish! We do 



The Eventide. 



169 



not see where the impressions we originate 
touch the lives of those with whom we associate ; 
it is best, perhaps, that we should not; but by 
a law of the universe they abide and perpetuate 
themselves, and sweep on over ages and genera- 
tions. Surely, it is worth while to covet and 
to cultivate an endowment like this, and to ap- 
preciate it as a sacred trust! What do we see 
in the charitable institutions of to-day but the 
effect of the widow's "two mites," and the 
Samaritan's " oil and wine," preserved to us in 
the Bible, to teach us, among other lessons, 
perhaps, the potency of personal influence? 

I am thankful to be able to believe that in 
my contracted sphere I have tried to exercise 
a salutary influence. I persuade myself that in 
some quarters, as in my home, I have seen the 
good results of it. And I have been cheered, 
in several instances, by letters received from 
persons almost forgotten, giving testimony to 
the sucess of my humble efforts, in past years, 
to lead the writers to the love of God and the 
practice of religion. 

And one other conviction is fastened in my 
mind. I revert with profound gratitude to the 
good hand of the Lord which was upon me in 
constraining me to accept the office of ruling 
elder in the church, against which my inclma- 



170 Extracts from an Elder's Diary. 



tions so strongly rebelled. I have been recom- 
pensed a thousand times over for all the 
anxieties, toils, and mortifications a consent to 
take up the burden cost me. The assumption 
of the office has caused me to lean more habit- 
ually upon the promised grace of God in my 
Christian life. It has been a check upon the 
inordinate claims of worldly business, and a 
protection to the spiritual side of my nature. 
It has given me facilities and opportunities for 
engaging in religious work. It has developed 
faculties which would otherwise have remained 
latent or inert. It has been to me, in all re- 
spects, an eminent means of grace. It has 
helped me, by the experience through which it 
has led me, to gather around me cheering views 
of God's ways of dealing with me. It has hung 
around the evening of my life memories and 
hopes as radiant as those golden cloudlets 
which I marked at the close of this ^winter's 
day, convoying the setting sun to his rest. 

Oh, yes, with a full heart "I thank Christ 
Jesus, my Lord," and I expect to thank him 
throughout eternity, "that he has counted me 
worthy to be put into this ministry," and given 
me ability and fidelity, in some feeble measure, 
to do him service therein. 

And were it in my power, I would leave it 



The Eventide. 



171 



as a dying charge to all to whom a call to labor 
in this capacity, in the edifying of the church 
of God, may be addressed, "Fear not; be 
strong; go tip to the mountains and bring 
wood, and build the house, for i am with you. 
saith the Lord! " 



